


Serpent's Egg (WIP)

by glinda4thegood



Series: Pirates: Lost and Found [2]
Category: Allan Quatermain Series - H. Rider Haggard, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Darkest Africa, F/M, Pirates, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 00:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Barbossa finds himself in an intimate relationship with Elizabeth Swann that deepens during adventure and adversity. He must come to terms with Elizabeth's insistence that Jack Sparrow will also be allowed in her heart and bed. </p><p>At the end of Lost & Found in Old Atlantis, our trio meets a messenger from Captain Teague, who speaks of a prophesy referring to a woman with three husbands, and relays a demand that the Pearl sail for Shipwreck Cove. Ancient, dying gods and fabulous, ruined remnants of lost civilizations are part of the ensuing journey of discovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Time is too slow for those who wait,_  
too swift for those who fear,  
too long for those who grieve,  
too short for those who rejoice,  
but for those who love, time is eternity.  
Henry Van Dyke

 

**“I wasn’t there when she challenged the Brethren to fight.”**

Teague’s messenger sat on the deck, cross-legged. Since leaving Tortuga, Swift seemed to be everywhere Barbossa was, with the exception of the Captain’s cabin. Constant shadowing had begun to affect Barbossa’s disposition for the worse, wakening memories of hungered frustration experienced during his last days under the Aztec curse.

“Captain Teague gave me the word-for-word later,” Swift said. “Holds Captain Swann in high esteem, he does.”

“From what I hear, Cap’n Teague holds many women in high esteem,” Barbossa rasped. 

“Captain Teague _is_ a man whose reality matches his reputation.” Swift took a set of pipes from his pocket and blew softly against the arrangement of short tubes. 

Barbossa rolled his eyes. He was of no mind for music, song, or pleasantry of any kind.

“I’ll be happy to tell you the tale, the entire tale, mind. Starting with first meeting ‘twixt young master Turner and the girl child Elizabeth Swann; ending on the white sand at Shipwreck Cove and the sundering apart of William Turner the man, entrusted with the sea’s responsibility to ease lost souls to the next world, and Elizabeth Turner, woman, king, warrior, widow.” Gibbs’ voice soared dramatically, a marked changed from his dour report concerning the state of cobbled repairs in the Pearl’s lower reaches.

“You can tell stories when the Pearl’s more seaworthy. Right now there’s work to be done.”

A sideways glance to gauge the degree of his captain’s irritation resulted in Mr. Gibbs’ rapid departure for the lower deck. 

Swift was not the only contributor to Barbossa’s faltering routine aboard the Pearl. Every time he turned around, either Swift or Jack lurked nearby. While the cabin remained Swift-free, Jack was usually ensconced on the bunk or at the table puzzling over old books and Sao Feng’s maps.

Or watching Elizabeth with a wholly unsettling, unreadable expression in his eyes.

It might have been amusing viewed as a farce in which Barbossa was spectator rather than participant. Elizabeth had, with practical finesse, settled them into a routine that provided occasion for intimacy without belaboring the obvious reason for the juggling. She continued to come to his bed with enthusiasm and joy. But something had changed. Not between them so much as inside her.

For all her passion, natural intelligence, and rather frightening ability to absorb new experience and translate that experience to action, Elizabeth’s upbringing had provided a limited stock of experience on which to draw. A young woman of privilege, she had been raised to ornament a father’s, then a husband’s, household. During his years on the sea Barbossa had seen young men of limited competence promoted steadily and surely, due to condition of birth. Occasionally he had seen young men of extraordinary ability, but no great heritage, rise in recognition and rank. Had Elizabeth been born male, Barbossa was sure she would have far surpassed her father’s rather mediocre accomplishments, and most of the men around her. 

Long black nights alone with the wheel, avoiding thoughts of what Jack and Elizabeth would be doing together, forced Barbossa to examine the scope of mystery that was Elizabeth Swann. Along the stages of their relationship as she progressed from nuisance to blood sacrifice to pawn -- then king -- in the game of freeing Calypso, there had been no moment of unrequited longing, no moment of revelation that left him fevered with quivering need for Elizabeth Swann.

It wasn’t until after the game was won, the privileged lady wed and widowed, that chance and desire brought them together in most unexpected intimacy.

_What can I get away with?_

_If you have to ask, you’re not a pirate._

It came to Barbossa on one of those wild, solitary nights that whatever he had been in the days before his heart was pierced by Jack’s single shot, he might be no longer. More disturbing was the realization the killing shot was not the first time Barbossa had been transformed and remade by Jack Sparrow. He came to the Pearl a supremely competent sea-faring rogue and adventurer, holding a useless title taken in battle. _Pirate Lord._ Those words had never placed gold in his pockets. Stealing the Pearl had brought him gold beyond his imagining, accompanied by an equal measure of disenchantment and despair. With the sinking of Isla de Muerta the sea engulfed all that remained of Hector Barbossa. 

Pirate Lord, mutineer, Captain of the Black Pearl, cursed thief, twice-dead and revived architect of Calypso’s freedom, lover of Elizabeth Swann . . . the man now living and breathing due to Calypso’s need and intervention with Death might hold the memories and form of that other man, might even essentially _be_ that other man. But there were also differences. The man Barbossa saw when he regarded himself in a looking glass was familiar, recognizable. But in the depths of the eyes, about the set of the mouth, the reflected visage was subtly altered.

During the weeks since confronting the EITC fleet, Barbossa and the Pearl had neither pursued nor taken any prize. There were reasons, or perhaps excuses, for this. The aborted plan to follow Sao Feng’s maps. A layover in Tortuga with a battered ship. A foray to Stinking Island, with the intention of enriching the treasury. And now a judicious response to Teague’s summons.

Good reasons, all.

The thought burrowed and reproduced like a weevil in a sack of flour, no matter how he tried to eradicate it. Barbossa wasn’t sure he _was_ still a pirate. 

 

Small Jack scampered up the stairs with practiced grace in spite of way the Pearl danced beneath them. Weather continued to be inclement and unpleasant since their departure from Tortuga. 

“Careful lad.” Barbossa found Small Jack’s tail and gave it a gentle tug. “You’d be better off in the cabin.”

Swift stopped his blowing against the pipes. “Fret not, we’ll come safe to harbor, Captain Barbossa.” 

“Should have repaired in Tortuga,” Barbossa said tersely. “There’s too much water below. Teague may have proper business with the Pirate King, and Jack’s his own flesh and blood, but he has no authority over me. Under other circumstances I’d show his summons the back of m’ . . .”

“What of Calypso? Would you respond to a summons from her?”

“The question is irrelevant.” Barbossa snorted. “If Calypso wanted my attention, a bit o’ parchment is the last thing she’d send my way.”

“Mmm.” Swift played a few more notes, a haunting tune that wove in and out of the music the wind made over rope and rigging. “Calypso is not an only child. Unless I’m much mistaken, and I seldom am, our visitor is -- at the very least -- related to Calypso.”

“If you’ve something to say, do so. Otherwise, you’re small enough that kicking the shite out of you would take but a few, entertaining moments.” The more he thought about it, the better the idea sat with him. Barbossa glared down at Swift and felt his right foot twitch.

“I’m dev’lish hard to catch, Captain Barbossa.” Swift grinned. His teeth were amazingly white and even, except for his canines, which looked a bit long and sharp. One stormy grey eye winked over the top of his spectacles. “You’re grumpish. That’s not unnatural. There’s not much I _can_ say. Teague would strip the skin from me arse.”

“That should concern me?”

The pipes disappeared into Swift’s coat. He stood and leaned against the rail. A gust of wind took his curling white hair and transformed it into a moving cloud that crowned him like a stationary thunderhead. “Soon enough it will, Captain Hector Barbossa.”

 

**Shipwreck Cove.**

Barbossa stared up at the mound of debris, smoke and fog-wreathed in the morning air. If some heathen god had swept the world’s shorelines after a great storm, then dumped the accumulated wrack into a single, towering heap, something very like Shipwreck City might have been created. The notion that whole families lived and worked in the labyrinthine warren of hulks seemed preposterous. 

“One errant spark from a candle should have taken the whole place a century past,” Barbossa said under his breath. On his shoulder, Small Jack chattered agreement.

“There’s more to her than meets the eye, as is so often the case.” Swift joined Barbossa at the prow. “You judge the outer shell. Inside she’s reinforced with rock and metal. The City has inflexible rules about the use of fire, and an elaborate dispersal of water barrels against the unforeseen event.” Swift shrugged. “As soon as a child can walk and talk, they learn the rules governing fire in the City.”

Barbossa nodded grudgingly. “Points taken, Mr. Swift.”

“We heard the anchor drop.” Elizabeth ran up the stairs, closely followed by Jack. Both looked indecently cheerful. 

Small Jack made a rude noise, jumped to the deck and disappeared into a hatch.

“More water below.” Jack squinted at Shipwreck City. “Can you get some of Teague’s ‘wrights out here, Swift? I have sufficient coin to pay for such service.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged. As soon as I deliver you to Teague.” 

 

The great hall was deserted, even a bit dusty. 

They filed past the long table. Elizabeth and Jack stared at the scarred and battered surface. Making allowance for Jack’s facial hair and darkened eyelids, the expressions on their faces were nearly identical. Memories of chaos and discord, and what came from it, Barbossa thought; memories of a plan gone in directions none of them had foreseen.

“They’re waiting for us in the library.” Swift led them to a door tucked under the stairs against the back of the hall. He knocked twice, softly, then opened the door and motioned Elizabeth to precede them. “Captain Swann, Captain Sparrow, Captain Barbossa . . . _alea acta est._ ”

Elizabeth made a small noise of appreciation. “So many books. More books than father ever had.”

Teague’s library would not have been out of place in any of the great houses Barbossa had seen in his youth. Taking in the appointments of the room, Barbossa wondered anew at the work that must have been done over the centuries to join and create the interior spaces of Shipwreck Cove. 

Shelving covered an area perhaps thirty feet long against the slightly curving wall opposite the door, then continued around the room to meet the casing of the door through which they had entered. Oiled, gleaming woods both dark and light -- calamander, zebrawood, teak, cherry, oak and walnut -- were joined with cunningly fitted angles, constructed by the hand of a master carpenter. Row after row of books lined the shelves, all sizes and widths, bound in a myriad of colors and textures. 

The smell of old leather, parchment, ink and perfume of scalded sealing wax hung in the air. 

“Captains.” Teague occupied a massive leather-padded chair. A wide, rectangular table in front of him held a disarray of books and papers. To his right, on a gilded pedestal ornately carved with every variety of heathen symbol and sigil, perched The Codex. The over-sized omnibus was cracked open to a spread of pages that appeared to contain an ominous amount of dark red ink. 

To his left a slight, dark-haired woman sat in a smaller version of Teague’s chair. Her race was problematical, although Chinese seemed likely. She wore a belted purple-black tunic, with dark cotton trousers peeking out beneath. Lustrous, intricately braided black hair, porcelain skin gilded by sunshine, eyes like amber beads . . . 

A quicksilver shudder ran down Barbossa’s back. He perceived the same intensity in the stranger’s golden eyes that he remembered marking in Calypso’s muddy gaze. _Fragile as Damascus steel, and not completely human._ Barbossa gritted his teeth and glared directly into the woman’s eyes, defiantly.

“Thank you for responding with alacrity to my summons.”

Barbossa let his eyes shift to meet Teague’s look impassively, with interior interest. Until coming to Shipwreck Cove on Calypso’s errand, he had never met the man face to face. Teague’s eyes, set clear and bright in his ruined, aging face, seemed in turn to weigh Barbossa. It was an uncomfortable sensation, one that left the distasteful impression that his potential for use had been judged to a nicety.

“Your summons, along with the words of your messenger, convinced us there was need.” Elizabeth stepped forward and rested her hands, palms down, on the brilliant parquet surface of the table between them. “So _why_ are we here?”

“There is grave need. Lady Lin, this is Elizabeth Swann, Hector Barbossa, and my own son Jack Sparrow.” Teague gestured with one long, ring-bedecked finger. “Please sit. Thank you, Swift.”

It was a dismissal. Barbossa heard the tone, saw Swift raise his eyebrows in amusement. Swift bowed to the lady, then stepped behind Teague’s chair. The soft ‘snick’ of another door opening, or closing followed the disappearance.

“Elizabeth Swann. The woman who would be Pirate King of the Brethren.” The Lady’s quiet voice held the music of water cascading over mossy pebbles in a silent forest.

“Not would be.” Elizabeth perched on a common oak stool, with fully as much self-possession and innate presence as Teague projected. “For whatever the title is worth, I am Pirate King. Who are you, Lady?”

The Lady looked downwards at her hands, folded demurely in her lap. There was an expression of introspection so encompassing that Barbossa felt an essential part of himself freeze with uncomfortable anticipation. What had Swift murmured? _The die is cast._

“I am a daughter. A sister. A mother. I am an agent of the ones some of your people call the Heathen Gods. There is a task that needs doing, by the hand of mortals. In the vaults of prophesy there is a book. In that book is a chapter. In that chapter is a verse: 

_Seek the woman with three husbands  
mirror of symmetry that wings above sea and land  
mirror of souls that hold justice is might  
and love is enough reason for mortal man's existence._

“Obscure, as prophesies are inclined to be." Elizabeth frowned. "I’ve braved the weird once. Get to the point of the matter.”

Lady Lin smiled, an expression of predacious amusement that sent another chill down Barbossa’s spine.

“We’re giving up so much of what we are,” the Lady said in a confidential tone. “This modern tendency to rush toward a resolution takes a while to accustom oneself to. You should cultivate a more deliberate, gracious approach when considering the weird, Captain Swann.”

“Where did y’think to be sending us, and with what purpose?” Jack looked at Teague, ignoring the Lady. “It is us, innit? The whole three husbands fol-de-rol suggests inconveniencing the men in Captain Swann’s life, of which I am one, an admission that surprises me as much as it must surprise you.”

Lady Lin shifted her eyes downward to her lap. “I have seen them, Captain Teague. You and I have arrangements to make.”

“As you say. Swift --” The words had scarcely left Teague’s mouth before Swift was back at his elbow. 

“Captains. If you would come with me?” 

Elizabeth stood, watching the Lady. “If you wanted deliberate and gracious, coming to a collection of pirates argues a certain lack of acumen. I’m fairly sure you don’t lack acumen, Lady Lin.” 

“You are a forward and presumptuous young mortal.” Lady Lin’s expression of amused approbation belied her words. “We will speak further this evening.”

 

Swift led them from the library with a rapid, bouncing gait. 

"Wait a bit." Jack scurried to match steps with Swift. “He’s well?” 

“He is. And he’ll be glad you asked.” Swift looked back over his shoulder, met Barbossa's eyes and winked with sly humor. “There’s some in the households as would like to see you, Jackie.”

Jack shook his head violently. “Not in m’best interest, at this time.”

“You’re probably right.” Swift laughed. “Teague said to put you in the crow’s nest while you’re here.”

“That’s all right, then.” Jack gave an exaggerated sigh of relief.

While it did not seem unusual to Barbossa that a man would find his childhood home an uncomfortable place, for the first time he gave conscious consideration to the fact that the only place he _had_ seen Jack truly comfortable and at ease was on the Pearl. The notion brought an unwanted sense of kinship so distasteful that Barbossa ignored it and deliberately moved his thoughts elsewhere.

“We’ve no need for accommodations. The Pearl is --”

“The Pearl is full of carpenters and shipwrights,” Swift said. “Teague has assigned every free man to her repair.”

“And there was still much to be repaired in the Captain’s cabin,” Elizabeth pointed out. 

“You’ll like the view from the crow’s nest, Hector.” Jack took Elizabeth’s arm and swaggered on ahead. “Haven’t been up there in years.”

“He used to drop fruit,” Swift whispered, grinning. “There was a time Teague banned him from the nest.”

Barbossa enjoyed a mental image of the citizens on the lower parts of Shipwreck City being visited by evidence of young Jack’s Sparrow’s thoughtless experiments. “I’m surprised he only dropped fruit.”

Swift paused at the bottom of a ladder and watched Jack and Elizabeth disappear through an opening that might originally have been a hatch. “Fruit was all they could prove.”

 

 **The crow’s nest was a platform** that had once been the deck of an ancient ship. Positioned at the very crown of Shipwreck City, the ancient figurehead pointed a forked tongue into the northern sky. Most of the deck had been built upon and roofed over, creating a single open-sided room with moveable screens that could be used for walls. A huge sleigh-backed, oak-slatted bed frame filled most of the space under the roof.

“Drakkar.” Barbossa walked to the figurehead and looked up at the northern sky past the rim of Shipwreck basin. “Tough old ship.”

“It’s a dragon.” Elizabeth followed him. “Where did all these ships come from?” She leaned over the railing, trying to count the number of individual ships in the mad stack beneath their perch.

“And how did this one end up at the top, instead of the bottom?” The wood felt smooth and warm under Barbossa's hand. “She’s probably the oldest one here.” For a moment he seemed to hear an echo of turbulent shouting, voices of warriors who once braved unknown waters, fought, raided, lived and died on or near the sea.

“Added her when I was a boy,” Jack said. “Someone found her and got her as far as the Cove. Teague’s carpenters pared her down and hoisted her into place. The dragon was widely considered to be a good omen for the city.”

“You’ll sleep well up here. I always do,” Swift said. “The bed’s not made up for company. We’ll send accoutrements up directly. Jack can show you where to bathe. Captain Teague requests you join him for a meal at sunset.”

“Bathe? But that means going below.” Jack twisted a bit of beard distractedly. “I suppose that’s also an order from on-high.”

Swift laughed and disappeared back down the ladder.

“Does bathe mean hot water?” Elizabeth’s voice had a greedy sound. “Why are you standing there, Jack? Show us the way.”


	2. Chapter 2

Jack led them down from the nest with a tentative, surreptitious posture, peeking around corners, stopping frequently to listen with the intensity of a skittish footpad.

“Worried you will be set upon by boisterous relatives?” Elizabeth poked Jack in the back between his shoulder blades. “What are you afraid of?”

“Don’t go blundering into hornet’s nests if you can avoid it, love,” Jack said. He peered down yet another hatch and ladder combination. “Generally fewer hornets this way.” 

At the bottom of the fifth ladder they found a small storeroom. Filled with casks and canvas covered crates, the room had the look of a smuggler’s cache. Humid and perceptibly warmer, thick with smells of brine and tannins, the air left a musty taste on the back of Barbossa’s tongue.

“Nearly there.” Jack led them to a trapdoor screened from easy observation by a wall of casks. “Quick, quiet, and unobserved.”

Rolling clouds of steam billowed up the ladder, enveloping them in damp animal-hide and wet laundry odors. When they reached the ladder’s final rung and stepped away, the planking turned from wood to a combination of metal and leveled rock. Strips of metal arched overhead, blackened supports that framed the space below like a massive skeletal ribcage.

Barbossa walked toward a dark, recessed area of the floor that ran from wall to wall. Water trickled along the bottom of a channel constructed with metal sides and a stone bottom. “Heated, fresh water? Interesting.”

“Collect it in a cistern, up top, combination rain and spring water. Feeds down through a system of mined shafts to the boilers.” Jack squinted toward one end of the room where steam rolled in milky clouds. “Someone’s working in the washery. I’ll just go along . . .”

“Jackie! Prowling around like the sly tom you are. Give us a squeeze!”

Both of Jack’s feet left the ground. He staggered and clutched his chest. “Gilly girl. Fair stopped m’heart. Don’t be sneaking up on a man.”

An attractively plump woman emerged damp and flushed from the steam. She grabbed Jack, pinched his cheek and wound her arms around his chest. “I’m not one you have to be wary of, Jack Sparrow.”

Barbossa thought he heard Jack’s ribs creak. 

“Ease up!” Jack pecked a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “Anyone helping you in the washery?”

“Not at present. Swift told me you’d be along. Who’s this with you, then?”

“Elizabeth Swann Turner, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard stories told; Hector Barbossa, same refrain.” Jack put a hand to his side and winced. “Gillyflower is head mistress of the domestic service guild.”

“Honor, I’m sure.” Gilly appraised them with shrewd cornflower-blue eyes. “There’s more hot water coming from the boilers right now. I’ll open the gates and fill the course. You men let the lady wash first. I’ll have clean shirts for you in a wink, if you’d like. That thing you’re wearing needs patching, Jack.”

“Let me open the gates, Gilly.” Jack shooed her away. “Get back to your washing. I’ll come have a bit of tattle with you. Since you are alone down here. You _are_ alone down here?”

“Jackie. Anyone not knowing better would think you’ve something to fear from your own family.” With a wink and last pinch of Jack’s cheek, Gilly disappeared back into the steam.

“Anyone might be right.” Jack shrugged, slanting an expression of guilt and unconcern at them. He wandered off, rolling back his sleeves and whistling. 

Barbossa removed his hat, tilted his head and listened. A metallic clanking, racheting sound was followed by the surge of water through the channel. Clouds rose from the surface, increasing the steaminess of the air to an almost solid bank of warm fog.

Elizabeth knelt and trailed her fingers through the rising water. “Oh. Lovely warm.”

“Something to dry off with.” Gilly returned with an armful of faded cambric squares. “And a pot o’soap. I’ve a couple of dresses as would fit ye. Or clean shirts and breeches?” She looked at Elizabeth, almost shyly. “Whatever you wish, Captain Swann.”

Elizabeth stood. “My thanks, Mistress Gillyflower. If you have a clean shirt and breeches, I’d be very appreciative.”

“I’ve worn skirts. Once or twice. And not for the reasons you might suppose.” Jack returned, shaking water from his hands. “Can’t say as I fault your current inclination to remain in breeches.”

“You once observed that breeches did not become me.” 

“Change of mind. Change of attire. Not just a woman’s prerogative, love. A man’s allowed both, every now and again.” Jack leered at Barbossa. “Still like her best in no dress.”

“If I call you a fool, it is not because of your words alone,” Elizabeth said tartly.

Jack laughed. It was a sound of pure happiness. 

A sensation of physical heaviness swept over Barbossa’s limbs and settled in his chest. He wondered which of his own mannerisms gave away the subtle changes in his character and disposition. 

“Bathe, love. Immerse yourself in soaping and cleansing and rubbing and . . . we’ll speak of my foolish shortcomings at a more private moment.” Jack made one of his over-elaborate bows, then was gone after Gilly.

“If he were merely a fool I’d find him a less noisome irritation,” Barbossa grumbled.

Elizabeth’s clothing began to drop onto the damp floor. “You’ve never commented on my attire. Never expressed a preference.” 

She stepped down into the water with a movement that made poetry echo in Barbossa’s memory. _She beauty is . . ._

“Men are odd creatures. I have two legs. I have two arms. My breasts carry more weight than yours, and may be used with greater purpose. I have a cunt instead of a cock. How do these slight differences result in a mandate to clothe oneself in skirt or breeches?”

Barbossa was unable to articulate an answer. He watched Elizabeth settle most of her body under the water. A flush of color suffused her collarbones and face. Strands of hair curled wetly down her shoulders, dripped like melted butter over the curve of her breasts and across her nipples. With an effortless motion her head disappeared under the water.

From his vantage above her body, Barbossa saw her relax submerged in steaming water. Legs apart, slender ivory columns wavered in the current, giving her the disturbing aspect of a sleek-muscled sea-creature. Long ago and far away, the vicar’s wife had been a pale foreshadowing of this woman. Odd that, as a younger man, he’d tended to pursue darker beauties. Softer women with heavier breasts, rounder hips -- and smaller vocabularies -- were his chosen entertainments.

Elizabeth surfaced wiping water from her eyes, flinging a spray at him with a joyful, wicked smile. Her breasts rose and fell with the water, pushed forward by the sweep of her back. A trick of perspective and buoyancy made them seem larger, fuller than usual.

“I had a preference for you in that dark velvet dress I kept for so many years.” Barbossa removed his coat and let it fall next to his hat. “It pains me to say, but I may agree with Jack in this respect. I have a greater preference for you clothed only in your skin and hair. Sometimes ’tis difficult for me to relinquish the notion that you’re still just a dewy young creature. No doubt your recent choice of apparel adds to this illusion.” His shirt joined the pile of garments, followed by his boots. 

“Young?” Elizabeth looked down at her breasts. “Not so young. I could have married years ago.”

Barbossa lay on his stomach, dipped his hand in the pot of soap and slid his thumb across her nearest nipple. Drawing a circular path away from the nipple he cupped the breast with his fingers and rubbed his thumb around her aureole gently. The ends of his hair gathered water and drifted toward her skin as if summoned. A sound, a nonsense syllable came from between Elizabeth’s lips, small and intense.

“Ahhhh . . .”

“Not sure why I kept that dress, all those years. My fingers catch on velvet. Too rough.” But the dress had skimmed her body like a lover’s caress, like night-deep skin of some exotic fruit tempting a man with the promise of tender sweetness beneath.

Elizabeth arched against his hand. Her breasts surged above the water line, the flesh of her nipples bunched and tight, firm and pliable when tested between a thumb and forefinger. 

“A bit of roughness adds to the sensation,” she said breathlessly. “If your fingers were smooth and pampered, unseasoned by the rigors of life at sea, that wouldn’t feel as good as it does.”

Between the tightness in his chest and belly, and steam clouding his eyes, Barbossa found he had to blink hard and clear his throat before he could speak. “And this feels good?” he managed to ask. His voice was barely a whisper, rough, foolishly uneven.

“Yes. There’s something you do that feels even better, and you can’t do it from up there. Don’t stand there gawking. Join me.”

Barbossa kicked free of his breeches. He splashed into the water beside her. “Always shouting orders.” 

“Use that mouth for better purpose than enumerating my virtues, old pirate.” Elizabeth wound her fingers into his hair and pulled the scarf free. Her mouth teased against his kiss. “We may not have much time. How?”

Seated on the course’s bottom the water covered Barbossa to mid-chest. He circled her hips with his fingers and guided her onto his lap. Buoyed by the water she moved easily, deceivingly insubstantial. Her skin was still fresh, unmarked by time, although the flesh beneath had altered. Barbossa remembered being poised above a chest of gold, his fingers sinking into her forearm. Firm, young muscle had yielded to the pressure of that grasp. The muscle under his fingers now was like whipcord. 

“I believe I’ll let you do the work this time, missy.” 

“Work?” Elizabeth braced one hand on his shoulders, cupped a handful of water with the other and carried it to his chin, fully wetting his beard. “Poseidon. Old man of the sea. _Work_ is too mundane a description for the epic efforts involved in this activity.”

A faint taste of iron from the warm, fresh water lingered on his lips. The firm softness of her buttocks sliding against his thighs brought him from hard to achingly hard. “You’ve a deplorable tendency to drift into embellishment and hyperbole when you’re naked.” His cock slid into her body, without the necessity of a guiding hand. Pleasure washed along his skin and pooled in a maelstrom low between his thighs. “If you must converse and wax eloquent, words of praise and encouragement would be well received, sweet Amphitrite.” 

Water slapped over the course’s rim as Elizabeth pushed her full weight against their joining. “Hector Barbossa. Veritable . . . paragon . . . of prodigious . . . grandeur!”

Barbossa bent his head to pull the unsoaped nipple between his lips. “Nicely said.”

Elizabeth shivered and stilled. “Ahhhh . . . You cannot know. The sensation. It is beyond wonderful. From here to here.“ Her fingers sketched a trail from the valley between her breasts to the curls between her legs, lingering against the juncture cushioned there.

“Believe me. I do know.” The movement that ran through her flesh ended in a fluttering of muscles around his cock, a liquid, teasing, tentative caress that left his heart racing with need. 

It was a wonder, a thing he did not try to examine too closely, or explain, this late-found knowledge that there was more to his body than bone and skin, balls and cock, thrust and come. When their bodies moved together the intimate reacquaintance and reminder of every inch of his skin was beyond anything Barbossa had experienced during years of casual liaisons and self-pleasuring. Deeper than skin, spirit touched spirit. Tattered, soiled and stunted though they were, Barbossa felt his heart and soul enveloped and expanded by the fierce strength and bright resolve at the core of Elizabeth’s being. It _was_ beyond wonderful.

Sao Feng thought her a goddess. Barbossa could understand the error of this judgment. As a man acquainted with the real thing, he knew Elizabeth was no goddess. She was something simultaneously far more mundane and far more rare.

“I believe I could bring you only using my tongue on your breasts.” Under the pressure of his tongue her nipple rolled like a water-glossed pebble against the satin field of her aureole.

“Please to try, Captain Barbossa.” With eyes nearly closed, Elizabeth clasped her hands over his shoulder caps. Her back bowed as she leaned slightly backward, presenting her breasts fully to his attention. “How is it with you?”

“Close, but don’t . . .” Barbossa momentarily lost the power of speech as her hips moved in a pulsing, circular motion that gently pulled then pushed against the length of his cock. “If we weren’t in the midst of the community bathing space, I’d fuck you until tomorrow. Since we are, and it’s apparent you’ve found your own pace, have at it, Captain Swann.”

Elizabeth laughed and pressed a kiss under his ear. “When you are inside me, length of time seems unimportant. A moment, a heartbeat, an hour, an eternity . . . it is like falling into the abyss between the world and world’s end.”

“Minx. Hyperbole. Embellishment.” He pushed his fingers between her legs, touching her, touching himself as she rose and fell.

“Your fingers. There. Yes . . .” 

He felt her tightness clench and relax, clench and relax in rapid succession. She seemed, all at once, to lose any lingering trace of young Elizabeth. Her water-beaded face, dreamy with pleasure, eyes nearly closed, seemed older, more mature. Sun had darkened the girl’s pale skin to golden brown. Wind’s needle-sharp fingers had caressed the corners of her eyes, leaving subtly tattooed skin. At the peak of her pleasure, Elizabeth forced her eyes open and smiled.

“Objective achieved, with a minimum of orders shouted.” 

A young man’s paean of superficial, easy language hovered between mind and tongue and stopped dead when Barbossa looked into the complexity of her eyes. A young man would call her goddess, offer his heart, his love, his soul for her favor. A young man would offer his life.

“Barbossa. Don’t look at me in that fashion.” Elizabeth still rocked against him, but her motions were less purposeful. She cradled his face, brushing fingers across his eyelids.

“What fashion would that be?” Barbossa took firm hold of her hips and moved her against his body. When she rose off his cock the water was far cooler than her body’s internal heat. The resulting sensation of hot and cold sent shivers of pleasure through his abdomen and thighs. 

“You turn that expression on the horizon when you’re assessing wind and weather.” Elizabeth squirmed. “Does the water seem suddenly colder to you?”

Water temperature was supremely unimportant. The sweetly tense promise of release dangled just within reach. Barbossa placed one hand low on the flat of her back and thrust into her as hard as the lack of leverage allowed.

“Shall I stand, and turn about?” 

“No need.” He buried his face in her wet hair and felt the tension crest and dash apart. Immersed in the aftermath of pleasure, Barbossa was unprepared for the sensation of burning sharpness that ripped along his calf.

Reacting instinctively to pain and the unknown, Barbossa pushed Elizabeth away from his chest and examined the water around them. A streak of movement, dull silver and black, flashed past him low to the course’s bottom. Elizabeth’s observation was correct. The water _was_ colder. Colder and darker in color than when he had viewed her from above. To either side the metal walls were barely visible through water now dense with an opaque haze of celadon hue. 

“What in the Locker was that?” Barbossa tried to hold his leg above water. A thin red line marked him from mid-calf to knee. “Up and out. Something tried to take a bite of my leg.”

Elizabeth moved without question. She placed her hands on the rim and threw one leg up to hoist herself over. 

Intending to assist her, then follow her example, Barbossa stood quickly. He managed to take only a single step away from the center of the course. Something smashed into the back of his bad leg with the force of a wooden mallet. He folded back into the water, flailing.

Definitely colder, almost freezing now, water surged over Barbossa. It felt as if chilled hands reached into his chest, grabbed his lungs and squeezed.

“Barbossa. I see movement, other than your imitation of a landed fish.” Elizabeth lay on her stomach, pointing down the course. “Up and out, as you said.”

Up and out. A large amount of water seemed to accompany the maneuver. Barbossa knelt next to Elizabeth, shivering and gasping. Rapid inspection of his throbbing leg showed a bright red area as large as a teacup located behind the knee. A small amount of blood leaked from the first scratch.

“I have not yet washed thoroughly.” Elizabeth sounded aggrieved.

“That was more than enough laundering for any man.” Barbossa stood, rubbing the back of his knee. “Whatever joined us seems to have departed downstream.”

As they watched, dark green water lightened and gradually cleared enough so the course’s reddish-tinged walls and floor could be clearly seen. Wisps of steam began to drift away from the surface again.

“Well. I’d ask if you’d lost something precious, except I see it’s still firmly attached.” Gillyflower’s voice preceded her appearance. 

Jack followed, grimacing. “I tried to stop her, but something wriggling and slimy fouled the drain so there was nothing for it but she must discover the particulars of said verminous intrusion.”

“A man don’t expect to be attacked in the bathwater.” Barbossa found Elizabeth’s shirt and tossed it to her, retrieving his own in the process. “Do bathers need to keep a machete at hand in this place?”

“Not before today,” Gilly said sternly. “And if you were bathing, my aunt Fanny’s a nun.”

“Your sainted aunt Fanny was not a nun,” Jack said innocently. “Anything vital injured, snipped, excised or abraded?”

“Nothing vital.” Blood oozed slowly down Barbossa’s calf.

“The water appears to be warm again. Barbossa and I will finish bathing,” Elizabeth said decidedly. “Jack, stand by the inlet and keep watch. When we’re done, I’ll stand watch as Jack bathes.”

“If I had a piece o’eight for every time I’ve heard that offer . . .”

“Never a dull moment when you’re at home, Jackie.” Gillyflower sighed. “I’ll thank the lot of you to not conduct sport in the bathwater. Now I’m going to clean slime out of my drain.”

**The sensation of being clean to the skin,** covered with fresh shirt and breeches, was unusual but, Barbossa grudging admitted, not without its appeal. 

Elizabeth’s skin glowed. Her hair floated around her face and shoulders like dandelion-down on the wind. The new leather boots, dark breeches, fine linen shirt and boy’s coat Gilly had provided suited her slim figure. 

Jack looked much the same in a less ragged version of his shirt, although if one were to bump into him in a dark alley his current state of cleanliness would be the perfect disguise. He did not smell like Jack.

Dinner with Captain Teague took place at the top of the stairs in the hall.

Fragrant odors of cooking spices set a reaction going in Barbossa’s mouth even before they entered Teague’s dining room. He passed through the door behind Elizabeth and Jack, into a space that must at one time have been a spacious Captain’s cabin. Aged black varnish glazed chestnut-colored planking. Where windows had once been portal to heaving oceans, blank window-shaped shelves now showcased books, pottery, shells and colored glass. A series of paintings hung on the wall facing the stairway door, portaits of women done in a distinctive, unusual style of muted soft lines and hues. An oval table occupied a significant portion of the room.

“Been some time since we had dinner together, Jackie.” Teague nodded at his son over a wide expanse of ebony wood. 

“Best that way.” Jack shifted and rolled his eyes. “Food first. Inconvenience second.”

Lady Lin entered through a door behind Captain Teague’s chair and took the seat at his right. “Food first. Captain Sparrow is a practical man.”

Barbossa longed to contradict her, but held his tongue. 

The food was simple and satisfying. Fresh fruit, steamed dumplings, rice with vegetables and fish were the main dishes, served by children under Swift’s watchful direction. 

_Teague’s children?_ Barbossa wondered. The boys had dark, curling hair and light brown skin. The single girl had hair the color of polished copper, and lively eyes that sparkled like rosecut emeralds. They seemed well-behaved and useful, although Barbossa witnessed a sideways look of deviltry one of the lads sent toward Swift’s back. 

The moment illustrated his own natural distrust of spawn. Barbossa ate a handful of dried berries as the children cleared away the dishes. The creatures were more unpredictable than new crew, and twice as likely to do something deviant, even under a watchful eye and steady hand.

“Now. A glass of wine.” Teague waved his fingers, a gesture repeated by Jack a second later.

“Glass of wine. B’lieve that would be nice. Compliments to the cooks, Swift,” Jack said in a regal tone.

Barbossa saw Elizabeth hide a smile under her fingers. _Fathers and sons,_ he thought cynically. It was never over until one -- or both -- were dead.

Swift served them with heavy, crystal glasses, full of wine so richly red it was almost black.

Scents of raisins, cherries and sunlight filled Barbossa’s lungs as he took a sip. The liquid was spicy sweet, as if some vintner had found a way to distill a summer’s afternoon in a great orchard into drink. It burned nicely in his blood, even after a meal, as potent as rum.

Barbossa raised his glass. “Excellent wine, Captain Teague.”

“A gift from Lady Lin. Greek, I b’lieve?”

The Lady inclined her head gracefully. “I am most pleased you find it palatable, Captain Barbossa. Swift, please stay after the children have gone.”

“So it’s decided then?” Swift faced the Lady. He waited until the last child closed the door behind Teague’s chair before continuing. “You’ve settled all the endless complaints and jurisdictional disputes?”

“That is not possible.” Lady Lin’s face dimpled for a moment before resuming an expression of placid serenity. “But you are here, and your skills are necessary for a fortunate outcome.”

“You know where I stand.”

Something made Barbossa look away from the Lady to Teague. The Keeper of the Code had turned slightly so he could watch both Lady Lin and Swift, with unblinking eyes like the blackest midocean water. 

Secrets and political maneuvering, human and otherwise, Barbossa surmised uneasily. 

Lady Lin nodded. “I know. While not universally embraced, I respect, and share, your choices.”

Swift grinned, shrugged, then returned to stand behind Teague.

Barbossa finished his wine, reflecting that Swift’s demeanor, even when following orders, belied a position as lackey. 

Jack had already emptied his glass. He swivelled about, looking at the portraits, worrying at the beads in his hair. Distracted and uneasy in Teague’s presence, it seemed.

Elizabeth sipped her wine slowly. She watched the Lady and Teague equally. Her face continued to be a mirror for her emotions, if not her thoughts. Unanswered speculation would have her bursting into questions at any moment.

“Captain Barbossa.”

His eyes snapped from Elizabeth’s face to the Lady’s. While he had watched others, others had been watching him. “Lady Lin.”

“When we met, and I disclosed the prophetic reason for my presence, Captain Sparrow made an assumption. What assumptions have you made?”

Barbossa groaned and winced. He saw an answering glint of humor in Teague’s face. “Beg pardon if I’m reluctant to meekly provide you whatever ammunition you may need to, shall we say, influence the direction of Captain Swann’s decision making. Not only are you an agent of the heathen gods, but a woman, and from a land where flowery speech and manners makes it near impossible to get a straight answer to a straight question.”

“Beginning to be rather concerned with how much in agreement I am with the mutinous old lecher,” Jack muttered.

“I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare . . .” Lady Lin’s voice carried the sound of overwhelming sadness.

“And the older I grow, the more I dare.” Barbossa nodded. “An adage I am familiar with, Lady. Here’s my truth. I’m a barbarian. The invitation to learn celestial dance steps is declined. But you need Captain Swann. You might not wish to invite Captain Sparrow and myself to the soire, however you know that where she goes, so we shall be going. That’s not an assumption, Lady, that’s more truth.”

Lady Lin smiled. “Captain Sparrow assumed his presence would be required whether he wished it or not. You assumed your presence would be an inseparable element of Captain Swann’s participation, regardless of our wishes. Do not be so hasty to believe I find these reactions unpredictable, or unwanted.” 

“And what of my wishes?” Elizabeth had reached her limit of keeping quiet. “Seek the woman, you said. Not -- seek the husbands. What would you ask me to do. Why? For whom would I act?”

“I can but ask if you will accompany me to a place. I am an agent of introduction, Elizabeth Swann.” Lady’s Lin’s almost emotionless serenity disappeared, to be replaced by intense urgency. “There is grave need, and the spectre of immeasurable loss hanging over this world. The loss is something only your children’s children’s children may see in fullness. If the brightness of the sun were to slowly fade, the full moon at night shine paler and duller, the abundance of sea and land wither and lose variety, the perfume of cherry blossoms thinly vaporize under the merest breath of air . . . subtle changes that cumulatively would rob richness from this world -- would you act to prevent these incorporeal wounds?” 

“There’s still doubt that he will ask for help?” Swift peeked around the chair for a moment.

“He has asked to look upon her. Such a request is significant,” Lady Lin said.

Elizabeth made a small noise of impatience. “I don’t wish to be rude, Lady Lin, but as Captain Barbossa so wisely pointed out, vague poetry is no good substitute for direct speech and action.”

Barbossa’s lips twitched. _Wise?_ He stored the remark for later use. 

“For purposes of this invitation, it is all I can give you.” 

Elizabeth looked around the table. “Captain Teague, give me your counsel and knowledge here.”

Teague’s wrinkles stretched and melded together as he smiled. “An unexpected request, Captain Swann. If Swift and Lady Lin think it’s important you go somewhere, to do something, it’s more essential than either you or I can probably imagine. Such a trip will not be easy or pleasant, and may not resolve itself as any of the parties involved wish, or foresee. Dealings with the gods are . . . “ Teague shook his head, and the smile faded to solemnity. “The choices you have already made, Elizabeth Swann, leave you with no choice here. You are already on the journey.”

“Bugger.” Jack stood and looked at his father, hands jammed under his sash. “Hate it when you do that, Teague.”

“Do what, boy?” Teague met his son’s accusing look with one of bland innocence. “By the bye, Mistress Gillyflower sent up the most curious specimen, gathered from the laundry drain. Swift?”

Swift left quickly. He returned carrying a clear glass jar stoppered with a tied muslin square. Two whipcords of black floated, loosely entwined, suspended in liquid.

Barbossa leaned forward to get a close look. “Eel of some kind?” Tiny, clouded eyes and scutes that started behind the huge gills and ran nearly to the tail gave the creature an unreal, fantastical appearance. 

“They look like a snakes, with oversized heads,” Elizabeth said. “Not creatures I would bathe with, by choice.”

“Thought that mark on your leg looked more like a scrape than bite, Hector. Wouldn’t want to try picking up one of these with your bare hands.” Jack poked a finger at the jar. “Gilly and I saw maybe a dozen before she cracked the drain. They never came through the boiler, Teague.”

“No.” Teague frowned. “One of the lads brought the second from seaside near the laundry drain. Dead. I believe they’re freshwater creatures, which makes their appearance at the Cove even more odd.”

“Well, someone is reponsible. Such livestock does not fall from the sky. Teague?” Elizabeth’s question had a commanding sound.

“We will find out what we can. Swift is asking questions.”

“I do not believe you will find an answer here,” Lady Lin said. “Puzzling. These creatures are very, very old. They would not be easy to find in this world. Someone sends a message.”

“Message?” Jack rolled his eyes. “A message is, _Dearest Jack -- my husband will be gone for a fortnight . . ._ Livestock in the bathwater would be more my idea of a humorous visitation.”

“Or threat,” Elizabeth said. “But they’re only eels. Barbossa was scratched, nothing more. I suppose the threat may lie in the supposition that if an unknown agent could, without detection, cause such an event, they might have done worse?”

The only one who could muster a reply was Swift. He removed the eel-jar with a flourish. “I’ll have the ladies in the kitchen put them in pickling brine, then get back to my prowling about.”

“Thank you, Swift.” Teague turned a brooding look on the Lady. “So. Is there anything further?”

“My ship will sail at sunrise.” Lady Lin prepared to leave the table.

“I’ll not leave the Pearl,” Barbossa shook his head. The safety of the Cove was a relative thing -- relative to the number of the Brethren that happened to be in the area. “And she’s in no shape for a lengthy voyage.”

“The Pearl will be in my care. In recognition of your services, Lady Lin has arranged payment for all necessary repairs and refitting. Work has already begun.” Teague lounged back and winked at his son. “You’re welcome to stay with us, Jackie, while they’re away.”

“No.” The declination, uttered by three voices at nearly the same moment, set the corner of Teague’s mouth quirking with amusement.

Barbossa looked at Elizabeth, then Jack, who had both spoken as he gave his opinion on the matter. Jack’s eyebrows disappeared under his scarf. He looked simultaneously pleased and affronted.

“That’s interesting. Didn’t imagine you would particularly object to proceeding without me, Hector.”

“Absence.” Barbossa pointed at his own chest, then at Jack. “Pirate. I’ll not leave you alone with the Pearl, even in her current condition.”

“If we go,” Elizabeth said directly to the Lady, “all will go. Where would you have us go, and how long will the voyage take?”

“The first portion of our journey is inconsequential. A day, perhaps two. If we proceed with the second excursion, it may be some weeks before we return to Shipwreck Cove, and your Black Pearl.” Lady Lin inclined her head, a formal gesture of leave-taking. “Sunrise, then.”

Teague watched Elizabeth through half-closed eyes as the Lady left. “I’d be proud to call you daughter. Is it too early for that familiarity between us?”

The sly, ingratiating tone in Teague’s rough voice did not translate to any appropriate familial sentiment Barbossa could identify. He narrowed his eyes and glared at the Keeper.

Warm color spread under the golden skin along her cheeks. “I think Elizabeth is appropriate for informal moments.”

Jack muttered a few words, largely unintelligible, although _lubricious old louche_ clearly finished the comment. “Any of that wine left?” 

“Swift -- find what they’ll need. Conversation creates thirst, and I’ve no doubt a long conversation looms imminent. Escort Captains Barbossa and Sparrow to the nest. I have a need to speak with Captain Swann on business of the Brethren, in her capacity as King.”

Barbossa saw Elizabeth’s nod of assent. He was surprised to discover he harbored a small suspicion concerning the Keeper’s motivation, but found no good reason to protest. Jack, however, was not as reticent.

“As long as it’s business, Teague. If you’ve an inclination for anything more personal, y’might begin by reciting the names of your other sons and daughters running about the place. Followed by the names of their mothers.” Jack held his father’s eyes directly, without any of his exaggerated mannerisms. “I understand there are several grandchildren to add to our family register as well.”

“I’ll let you be judge of how and when Captain Swann receives more intimate knowledge of our genealogy, Jackie.” Teague’s long fingers swept the air. “Get away with you now.”

Jack’s mouth opened, then closed. 

“A most excellent dinner, Captain Teague.” Barbossa trod on Jack’s foot as he brushed past. “Be on the move, Jack.”

“Go on up, Jackie,” Swift said as they descended the stairway above the great table. “I’ll be along directly with provisions.”


	3. Elizabeth's conversation

**I always knew my father was not a particularly strong man.**

Weatherby Swann had an active, intellectual mind and genuinely kind nature. But he was not a man whose very presence caused backbones to stiffen, fingers to seek the comfort of a weapon. He was, I now realize, a man malleable to sweet words and gentle persuasions. James Norrington was, under all his acquired discipline, stronger than father, but in many ways very much like him.

When he was younger, Will could be cozened with a smile and soft suggestion. The man he has become is keen and tempered like the steel in the swords he once made. A woman’s wiles might still move him in small, inconsequential ways. It may be some time before I can verify this belief.

Why I think of father, James, and Will at this moment is interesting, as Jack would observe with a drawling leer. Strangely the two men closest to me are aloof and resistant to examination, as I martial my wit to face a man instinct tells me is more dangerous than Barbossa at his most pitiless, more charming than Jack when he’s had a large amount of rum and is very much in _that_ kind of mood.

Teague rises, his eyes and face still luminous with amusement from Jack’s implied rebuke. He gestures to the door behind his chair. “Please. Join me for a brandy, Elizabeth.”

“Thank you. We’ve established that you may call me Elizabeth. What shall I call you, Captain Teague?” 

His eyes lengthen to slits as he looks me over, head to toe and back again. My entire body responds with a rush of warmth. It is here, I think, that he is most like Jack. Around his dark, evocative, wicked eyes.

“Teague will do. It is what Jackie’s mother called me half the time.”

“And the other half?” I am curious about the relationship between man and woman that resulted in my Sparrow. Which parent is most responsible for this whimsical, infuriating creature’s flights of fancy and genius for drama? Was it mother or father who molded a man who pretends he has wants, but never needs? 

“Wasn’t anything I’ll share.” His face is distressed by time, like a well-made, much used saddle bag. Teague shakes his head, voice dropping so low the cavernous depths of his words seem to resonate against my skin in a throbbing line from ear to jaw. “Don’t believe I’ll add to your verbal arsenal, Elizabeth.” 

Teague moves slowly, deliberately. There’s more than a hint of stiffness in his posture, but there’s also grace and wiry strength in the old man. When he opens the door with a courtly gesture, Jack appears in my mind’s eye, superimposed over his father for a brief moment. Is Teague’s body as distressed as his face, inked and scarred, lean and tough? 

And what would his body look like unclothed? He is older than Barbossa, and Barbossa is older than Jack. Barbossa’s body is lean and strong, with warmly colored red-gold hair accented with the pure white of age. His skin bears the marks of a hard life, but I see essential masculine beauty in his naked form. 

Jack has more meat between his bones and skin, and is spare where Barbossa is rangy. Whorled designs cover his chest like exotic, stencilled fabric. He has more presence naked than he has clothed; nakedness reveals his lithesome strength, the oak-hard muscles in his arms.

Divested of layers of disguising raiment, I imagine Teague’s body would combine elements of both my men. His skin would reveal a wealth of stories written by experience’s sharp quill over flesh and bone. The hair on his lower belly would be mostly silver, if the errant strands on Jack are good clue. 

I briefly consider whether his cock and balls would look like Jack’s, or if Jack’s look like Teague’s . . . but find I prefer not to include dangling male equipment in what I admit is slightly idealized portraiture.

Curiously, the images do not banish easily. I think I may be blushing again. Just when did such imagining become so easy for me?

“My workroom, and haven.” Teague gestures at a pair of luxurious fauteuils that look as if they might have come from a king’s palace. In contrast to the preciousness of the chairs, the battered, wide-topped stool sitting between them makes me think of the eclectic furnishings of Barbossa’s cabin. Pirates. Magpies the lot of them.

“Please, be comfortable.”

I sit gingerly on embroidered silk, and look around avidly. The room is another of the City’s marvels. Light wavers and sparks off facetted blocks of glass that line shallow ledges and cluster around oil lamps on broad workbenches. A sweep of leaded windows nearly identical to the Captain’s cabin aboard the Pearl provide additional diffuse light for what is clearly an artist’s workshop -- or perhaps, misplaced Oriental bazaar. It’s almost too much to absorb. Bolts of richly colored fabric, rolled rugs, and stacks of brass-bound seachests create a tangled, exotic jumble. A section of wall twice the span of a man’s arms is covered with mounted blades of every description and size that catch glass-reflected light and wink at me. Two swords have hilts that remind me of Will’s work, and my fingers itch to close around the cold metal, feel it warm under my hand, and try the weight and balance of the blade.

There are two workbenches. One bench appears dedicated to the working of wood. The other holds stoppered glass containers, and apothecary appurtenances. A light, pervasive odor emanates from this area: bergamot, patchouli and ambergris.

Stacks of apparently finished canvases hunker under the workbenches. Framed paintings hang everywhere. Women. Men. Children. Landscapes. The technique is the same as that seen in the dining room portraits. My eye is not trained, but I perceive an informal, spontaneous beauty to the oddly sketchy images. 

“Titles bestowed by popular decision are often transitory.” Teague places a decanter and two goblets on the stool, then settles into the other chair. He pours a generous portion of liquid into the goblets. “Which of your titles do you value most, Elizabeth?” 

I take the brandy from his hand. The aromatic bite of liquor tickles my nose as I take a sip. “What are you trying to tell me? If you say that being Pirate King has little practical application, I will not be surprised.”

“It’s more than your title of King. When Barbossa burned the nine pieces of eight, and set Calypso free, everything changed for the Brethren.” Teague sits ramrod straight in the chair, one arm draped elegantly over an armrest. “Over the years there have been requests from particularly successful and bold men who wished to be given formal Lordship of this or that bit of water. Men who wished for recognition from the Brethren. Such requests have always been denied without explanation.”

“It was because the nine Lords held the responsibility between them, for Calypso’s binding? That was the only reason their titles existed?”

“Not the only reason, but it was the reason that held them together, more or less, over the years.” Teague tilts his goblet for a long, slow drink, dark eyes half closed in apparent pleasure. When the amber liquor is gone he places the goblet on the stool between us. “I am the Keeper of the Code, Elizabeth, and the Code has not been altered or expanded for many years. My duty is to hold men true to a system of governance that clings to the present on finger-and-toe-holds that vanish as we speak.”

I finish the brandy. There is more heat in my stomach and chest, either from the liquor or from listening to Teague’s seductive voice. He’s trying to tell me something, trying to get me to think about our lives, actions, choices. Our future.

“All these paintings. You are the artist?” I place my goblet next to his on the stool and stand. There is a lone easel at the end of one workbench with a head and shoulders portrait. “Is that Jack, when he was younger?”

“You’ve picked the only painting I’m not responsible for.” 

The resemblance, I see, is both uncanny and superficial. From ten steps distant it might be the youthful representation of either man. When I’m close enough to touch the canvas, I know the wicked dark eyes, quizzical sweep of brow, sensual quirking mouth all belong to Teague. The nose is larger, less classic than Jack’s. Strands of crimped dark hair soften the angularity of a longer face. The style of painting is similar to the other portraits around me, but there’s a finer, more exact quality in the rendering of eyes and lips, a realism that almost leads me to expect one dark eye will close in a wink, those sensual lips will part with a low suggestion. 

“Jack’s mother. Taught me. To paint.”

I turn from the portrait to the man and meet his gaze. “Why am I having a drink with you? It’s not to discuss the future of the Brethren.”

“No. Although I will call upon all the Captains of the Pearl to speak of this when you return from Lady Lin’s quest.” Teague’s hands move restlessly, hover, then pour more brandy in our goblets. “I’ve been worried about Jackie.”

Not what I expected. I catch his gleam of amusement and shut my gaping mouth. “Worried?”

Teague takes his time drinking the brandy. Reflected light gives the illusion that miniature fireflies swarm in the night of his eyes. “As much as I wished to have a conversation with you, I wished to provide an opportunity for Captains Sparrow and Barbossa to speak without your presence.” 

He laughs, a thing so rich and deep that I think I might hold out my fingers and stroke the sound. 

If my fingers were not clenched.

“You don’t need to be defensive with me, Elizabeth. I cannot, will not judge you in this.” Teague is still laughing.

“Indeed not,” I say, more forcefully than I intend. “Pot. Kettle. Why do you think Jack and Barbossa need time alone? To speak of what?”

“They need to reach an accord. Over you.” Laughter has vanished. “There is no Code for what you are trying to live, Elizabeth. No guidelines or chart. Experience and past history between Jackie and Barbossa -- ruined camaraderie, mutiny, theft, hatred, murder -- cannot be wiped clean even by death. For such men to love the same woman, coexist and not daily attempt to gut each other . . . you must realize how unnatural and wearing such a life might be.”

“They both made me a promise not to harm each other.” I force myself to take another drink of brandy. The expression of compassion and understanding on the old pirate’s face almost brings me to tears. 

“And that may hold, for a time. Are you prepared to plan for your future, to build your own Code, society and system of governance?” Teague leans toward me, dangerously intent. His fingers close around mine and remove them from the goblet. His skin is hot, like Jack’s. He brings my hand to his mouth and whispers against my palm. 

“Elizabeth Swann Turner, King of the Brethren, Pirate Lord of Singapore, lover of Captain Will Turner, Captain Hector Barbossa and Captain Jack Sparrow. What will you do to keep your own?”

The question moves through my skin like a tremor through the earth, revealing slippage, crumbling and ruins in my heart. My nipples press hard against the muslin of my shirt. Even as I frame an answer I wonder what this mouth, this voice might do against flesh more sensitive than the palm of my hand.

“I will do what I must.” My hand is shaking and I pull it from his grasp. “If you could share any personal experience that might assist me in such delicate negotiations . . .?”

“You’ve already done better than I ever managed.” Teague’s eyes dance. “Pay attention to small changes in weather. Don’t be slow to ask for help. Be blunt, be forthright. Men cannot read women’s thoughts. Kisses are easier to misinterpret than words.”

“If I am accused of talking them to death, I shall place the blame squarely on your shoulders.” I stand and Teague rises from his chair. “You asked me which of my titles I value most. The answer may be -- one I do not yet fully own.” He is taller than Jack, and I have to stretch a bit. The hair of his beard is surprisingly soft. He holds himself very still as I place my hand on his chest and kiss his cheek. “I’m still not comfortable with daughter, but _family_ would be an honor. Have I left any room for misinterpretation?”

His bottom lip twitches, but otherwise there is no reaction. I turn and move away toward the door. “Thank you for the brandy, Teague.”

“Most welcome, Elizabeth. Safe journey.”

Swift is waiting on the other side of the door. I follow him through the remnants of gracious and humble ships that live on in this strange warren that is Shipwreck City.

Barbossa and Jack. Opposite sides of the same coin. Men who may not agree with me, but will listen when I speak. Men who prove their respect and affection for me by waking each morning and deciding to postpone killing each other.

It is a promising beginning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Light, sporadic wind funneled around and down the old crater’s sides,** bringing evening’s coolness and scents off rock and water. Barbossa stood at the drakkar’s rail and looked out over the cove, breathing in heavier smells from below. The bulk of Shipwreck City spread underneath their feet, a vertical, compressed, landless port, with all a port’s attendant odors. Smoke from lamp oil, boozy scents of unwashed casks, sweet hemp smoke, ripe composted produce, decaying fish, essential oils and herbs . . . Shipwreck City creaked like a rheumy old man, and broke wind like one.

Jack leaned against the railing, well out of reach. He avoided Barbossa’s eyes, choosing to scrutinize the starry sky.

“The lady said we’re not required. You could stay with the Pearl.” Barbossa removed his hat and coat, watching Jack’s face closely.

“We are almost standing on top of a mountain.” Jack deliberately avoided eye contact. “ _You_ could stay with the Pearl. It’s what you’re good at.”

“I’m willing to trust Teague to keep her safe.” Someone had decked the bed frame with a plump mattress and bedding. A bench-topped chest now occupied a place at the foot of the bed. Barbossa stepped under the enclosure and dropped his hat and coat on the chest.

“I don’t know that I can share her with you,” Jack said. 

The muscles between Barbossa’s shoulders twitched. “The Pearl? You might want to be more specific on the subject of this conversation.” He stretched his leg and groaned. The fresh scrape itched abominably, and his knee throbbed. Barbossa sat on the chest and stretched his leg, rubbing at the scratch. “I know you can’t be meaning Elizabeth. What lies between us is her choice. If you’ve ought to say on that choice, say it to her -- then be ready to duck and run.”

A faint strain of music, the bawdy refrain of an old chorus rose on the updraft. Ale and plump-bottomed wenches, the fast sprawl of a rumble with fists flying, smoky air and congenial conversation beckoned from open decks below. The familiar, just within reach.

“Don’t believe me complacent, Jack, for I am not,” Barbossa said slowly. “The Pearl is mine now. We have history between us. Take her from me, and I will take her back. As to sharing -- although I say the Pearl is mine, it may be that I could trust her in Elizabeth’s care.” He felt his tongue curl against the next words, but he forced them from his mouth. “In the right circumstance, possibly yours.” 

“Too kind, Hector, too kind.” Jack’s lips twisted with a sarcastic sneer. “If not for the fact Elizabeth would kill me in turn, I would find opportunity to enact an encore performance of Hector Barbossa’s Final Moment, then throw the monkey overboard. Sail the Pearl off toward the horizon.”

“Next time the single shot will be mine, Jack.” Finally, Sparrow was meeting his eyes. “What do you really want? You were ready to Captain the Dutchman, leave the Pearl to others. As distasteful as the notion may be, it’s not like we haven’t shared before.”

“Didn’t know, at the time.” Jack held up his hands and inspected his rings. “Shhh. Tell no tales.”

Something ancient and huge lurked nearby, pricking normally dull human senses to a pitch of unexpected receptivity. The all-too-human exhalations of Shipwreck City, grandiose landscape surrounding their vantage like an antique tapestry, nearly full moon above riding night’s starry waters . . . Barbossa shivered. He still held fresh in his memory both sides of existence’s coin: death and rebirth. This same extreme awareness and clarity had accompanied those moments.

“You bartered with Tia Dalma for the compass, for a tool to help you regain the Pearl. What did she ask in return?” The question had been in back of Barbossa’s deepest thoughts for some time. “Only thing Calypso was interested in was breaking free. What part of the puzzle did you hold, Jack?”

“Did she use her mouth, or ride you like a dolphin rides the swells?” Jack’s cheekbones were crescent slivers below shadow-set, infinitely sad eyes. His voice lost its edge, dropped to an intimate conversational tone that, inexplicably, induced a feeling of alarm resulting in the prickling of every hair on Barbossa’s forearms.

“Both. And more. I think her magics work best on what, who, she holds within her.” Barbossa remembered waking from dreamless sleep, cold, immobile and barely aware of his body as an insensate bulk. 

_De sea carry ya to me, Barbossa. My sweat, my tears, my blood, my womb. I birt’ ya back into de world to do me will._

“He’ll figure it out eventually, Jackie.” Swift’s head poked out of the hatch. “You don’t mind if I join you?”

“Total lack of privacy in this place,” Jack muttered. “You’re welcome as long as you brought wine. You been discussin’ me with Him, Swift?”

“No, Jackie.” Swift climbed onto the deck and hoisted a substantial hamper up after him. “Teague always wants news of you, but you’re the only one of his children he don’t discuss with me. Although indirectly . . . we’ve been updating the histories. The volume containing an original report of Calypso’s binding has never been part of the City archive. Now there’s no reason not to include it in the library.”

Jack watched Swift with a peculiar intensity. “Tell the old lecher about the shortcomings, caprices and perambulations of gods, Swift. Tell him man is only the reflection of their faces, seen in a cheaply made mirror kept in a poorly lighted room.”

“This has the sound of an old discussion, on a subject more philosophical than I care to consider.” Barbossa rubbed his fingers against his thigh, then stopped. It had become a new, bad habit; the action resulting from a lurking consciousness of how his fingers had looked in a skeletal state and need to prove he was whole.

“Old. Ongoing.” Jack rummaged in the hamper and extracted the wine. “When I found Calypso she was somewhat different than you knew her to be, Hector. Heard a story, followed it to the source. Found a mad goddess, and by mad I also mean angry, for she was that as well, both crazed and undirected wroth, subject to upheavals that make most women’s humors prior to their natural cycles seem pleasant and rational.”

“I felt the madness in her as well. Mostly she seemed shrewdly cunning and focused on breaking the bond.” Barbossa saw Swift shake his head.

“When the Pirate Lords bound her in her bones, the magic Davy Jones gave them was earth magic, not sea magic. They attempted to fix and hold in a single form something whose nature was constant change and eternal motion,” Swift said. “Calypso could not make the transition whole. The essence of who she was, her will, her desire, was affronted, at odds with the form in which she found herself. Seeing her condition, the Lords decided the kindest course was to leave her with a group of natives who worshipped their own sea gods.”

“They cared for her. Kept her from harm when rages overcame her. Worshipped her,” Jack continued the story. “When I first arrived by chance on her doorstep, she was in a moment of exhausted calm. We had conversation. She said she needed to be able to think and reason more like a mortal. Over the years I knew her we traded, but not in gold or coin. Eventually she gave me the compass. Eventually I gave her . . . a piece of my soul, I think.” Jack shrugged. “Not as if I was using all of it.”

Chill spread through Barbossa’s blood. The piece of the Jack-puzzle he was always missing could have been with Calypso the entire time. “Afterwards?”

“She changed, gradually. Became rational, more like a woman, less like a Bedlamite. I didn’t know what her history or goal was. Didn’t much care.”

“Until she brought me back.” Barbossa shook his head. “A man as curious as you are, Jack, and you never wondered more about Tia Dalma?”

Jack shrugged.

“Your actions did not go unnoticed.” Swift stood at the edge of the hatch, one foot poised on the ladder’s top rung. “In places both high and low your deeds have marked the four of you. Sparrow’s soul, Barbossa’s body, Swann’s heart bought Calypso her freedom.”

“And Will? Soul, body and heart, all taken,” Jack said. “I hope Calypso treasures her precious freedom.”

“Freedom.” Swift began the downward climb. “There’s a convoluted philosophical concept. I’ll be waking you before dawn. Sleep well.”

 

There was no further conversation until the first bottle of wine was gone, a situation that coincided with Elizabeth’s return. She was quiet, deeply thoughtful. 

Barbossa watched Jack fish the stopper from a second bottle. “Captain Swann. Give us your reasoning on both sides of a response to Lady Lin’s proposal.”

“I could not call it reasoning,” Elizabeth said slowly. She accepted a mug of wine, then stood with her back to the rail. “If I am truthful with myself, and with you, I must admit intuition rather than reason guides me toward accepting her charge. Something about her calls to me.”

“Gods.” Jack filled his own mug, then poured the remainder of the wine into Barbossa’s mug. “Unfair advantage.”

“Then there’s the Pearl. We could deplete Jack’s accumulation of treasure getting her restored. But if we trade whatever skills Lady Lin perceives we offer in exchange for that restoration -- I judge that to be worth consideration,” Elizabeth said.

“That’s reasoning I would support without hesitation, if the gods weren’t involved.” Barbossa saw her nod. “Teague thinks our choice has been made.”

“Too good at patriarchal decrees and pronouncements, Teague is.” Jack’s voice held the intonation of a mulish ten-year-old.

One night short of full, the moon’s whiter light illumined the old drakkar’s deck as clearly as the sun would, but more subtly. A slight frown painted a line of shadow between Elizabeth’s eyebrows, while washing the rest of her face free of evidence of sea and wind. It was like looking back in time to the young girl who had once thrust herself at him, demanding parley.

“Whose decision is this, Captain Swann?” Barbossa asked quietly.

Elizabeth turned and looked down at the shadowed array of anchored ships in the water below. “I say that while a ship may not have two captains, it may have three.” She turned back to face them, shoulders squared and jaw set. “I say that three voices must make this decision. I vote aye, accept Lady Lin’s proposal.”

Jack nodded. “I’d like to keep my treasure, squander it on something more interesting than craftsmen and new planks. I say, aye.”

“And I say aye.” Barbossa saw a swift smile of amusement and affection on Elizabeth’s face, and a subtle lessening of tension in her shoulders. He felt his cock stir, and was immediately aware of a wish to feel the night air on his bare skin, and hers. “Jack, I’m sure there’s somewhere else you could spend the night.”

“Quite right.” Jack heaved himself away from the railing and meandered into the roofed enclosure. He sat down at the foot of the bed and let himself fall backward. “Teague’s treating us very well. Down mattress complete with feather bolsters. Lovely. There’s one for each of us, mate.”

Elizabeth bit her lip, smiling in spite of the regret in her eyes. “There’s room for all three of us to sleep on the bed, if Jack does not thrash about.”

“Lizabeth’s in the middle.” Jack wrestled one of the bolsters into position.

“Boots, Jack.” Elizabeth turned into Barbossa’s arms and gave him a brief hug. “We don’t know what’s ahead of us. A good night’s sleep will. . .”

“Not buying the goods, Captain Swann.” He hadn’t _seriously_ contemplated Jack’s death in a few days. A brisk shove over the drakkar’s rail would be spectacularly successful. Barbossa removed his own boots and took the spot at the bed’s headboard. “We could still return to the Pearl.”

“I like it up here. And I rather like the thought of sleeping between the two of you.” Elizabeth stretched out between them and yawned. “Nice bed. It would probably fit in the cabin.”

“Wouldn’t mind getting rid of that old bunk. Smells of monkey,” Jack mumbled. “Nice feather bed be a tolerable addition to my cabin.”

Barbossa sighed. “My cabin.” He wedged a bolster under his elbow and leaned back against the bed’s headboard. 

Elizabeth lay crossways at his knee, with Jack beyond, one leg flung over the second bolster. Barbossa closed his eyes. The air around them smelled of salt and tar, and the planking beneath their bed had weathered many seas. But there was no sensation of the give and take between wood and water. It seemed, somehow, wrong for the drakkar to end her days in this way. 

_Where have you been, lass? What coasts? What ports? Where did your warriors go?_

The only times he’d slept deeply, naturally, since coming back had been with Elizabeth at his side, after sex. 

Time was liquid. Time left witness to her passage on land, but seldom on water. In the dark of his mind, Barbossa imagined an existence where nothing was solid or stationary, where time and experience and truth were as mutable and surprising as sea unbound from land’s embrace. Calypso had recalled him from somewhere. Had he been navigating that liquid world, at peace, at home? When he gave in and let himself examine the darkness, there was no lingering sense of horror or dread if he tried to summon a more precise knowledge of the time between his two lives. Barbossa had no doubt his experience would confound the clerics. He had not been a good man for large parts of his life. Most would predict a final reward of pain, torment and fire. 

Surely a man would dread returning to such a place, had he once sojourned there, if only briefly? 

Barbossa opened his eyes when Elizabeth’s breathing changed, deepened. Jack muttered something against the bolster, twitched and burrowed. It was surprising that Sparrow would let down his guard to this degree. In spite of the oath they had sworn to Elizabeth, that neither would harm the other, Barbossa was still wary of Jack Sparrow. For one thing, the man drew the most unpredictable events and outcomes around his person. Forces both natural and unnatural filled his sails and set his courses.

Jack’s hair fanned across the lighter colored linens like storm-tossed kelp on the edge of shore. One of Elizabeth’s hands nestled among the braids and trinkets, palm up, fingers curled like some pale crustacean caught in the flotsam. If he wanted to touch her, he had only to stretch out his hand. Even with Jack in the bed, she would turn into him, sleep with her cheek against his chest.

Barbossa pushed the bolster into place for a pillow, and let himself slide down to lie with his back against the headboard. He didn’t reach for Elizabeth. It was enough to know she was there.

 

The smell of morning and Elizabeth’s hair woke Barbossa. He opened his eyes, conscious of an unaccustomed sensation of physical well-being. He was unable to remember a recent night’s sleep as deep and comfortable. His leg was barely stiff.

Elizabeth lay with her back to him. Jack, in turn, lay with his back to her. They were both still asleep, although Barbossa saw Jack react as he sat up and and looked out at the lightening deck.

Swift’s head appeared through the hatch. “Get them moving. There’s food below. Teague’s waiting.”

“Bugger never sleeps.” Jack rolled off the bed. He stretched and yawned. “I want this bed, Swift. Tell them to move it to the Pearl while we’re gone.”

“I’ll ask him.” Swift laughed at them. “A bed big enough for three precious pirates in a row. I see why you’d want it.” 

Jack’s boot missed Swift by a good margin. From the empty hatch Swift’s voice carried clearly. “Get moving!”

 

Fully aware of the lack of culinary variety in their immediate future, Barbossa ate a substantial meal. From Teague’s household of above average cooks came fresh baked breads and pastries, fruit, and a selection of grilled meats. With Jack’s help most of the meat quickly disappeared. Out of the corner of his eye, Barbossa watched Elizabeth appropriate and eat an entire dish of marmalade with half a loaf of crusty bread.

“You’ll want to have a quick word with your crew.” Teague drank tea from a milky-white, bowl-shaped cup. “I’ll have them assist in moving the dragon’s bed to the Black Pearl. Lady Lin has agreed to pay for it, if your journey is successful. If not, Captain Sparrow will settle the account.”

“Your word to keep the Black Pearl, her contents, and her crew under your protection while we’re gone?” 

Teague extended his hand. “You have my word, Captain Barbossa.”

Barbossa pushed back from the table and came around to take the offered hand. Teague grasped his fingers strongly, and leaned forward, speaking low near Barbossa’s ear.

“Keep them on course, Captain. Bring them back whole. I doubt it will be easy.” He released Barbossa’s hand and spoke so the others could hear. “May you have a safe journey, and safe return.”

 

Swift rowed them away from the City in a longboat filled with packages of assorted sizes. The Lady’s ship was visible, coming through the Devil’s Throat as they reached the Pearl. 

Gibbs waited above as they bumped up against the Pearl’s side, mouth clenched in a dour frown. “Like to be going with you. Captain Teague sent word you’ll be leaving us all here?”

“Sorry, Mr. Gibbs.” Elizabeth stood and touched the Pearl. “Keep an eye on the repair work.”

“Aye. I suppose someone has to.” 

“You’ll have other men capable of doing that?” Swift squinted up at Gibbs. “We may need an extra bit of muscle along the way.”

“And Mr. Gibbs has been so kind as to volunteer,” Barbossa agreed. “Mr. Pintel expressed a desire to assume a more responsible position. Give him the word, then join us, Mr. Gibbs. Also, remind Mr. Ragetti he has the care of Small Jack.”

Gibbs face disappeared. Within a minute he swarmed down the ladder and dropped into the longboat. “Where are we away to? No stinking plants or cannibals on our horizon, I hope?”

Barbossa saw Jack lean a bit and touch his hand against the dark wood. “We have no more knowledge than you, Mr. Gibbs. If you’re concerned, grab the ladder and disembark.”

“Too late.” Swift pulled on the oars. “The Fenghuang waits.”

 

The Fenghuang sailed like a bird over the water, graceful and swift. Under a pale sun and cloudless sky they moved away from Devil’s Throat, onto open sea with a light wind filling the sails. Lady Lin stood at the ship’s prow. Her eyes were closed, her lips moved in silent conversation.

Swift and Gibbs stood together watching the wheel, which was, strangely, unmanned by any of the Lady’s many crewmen. 

Something inside Barbossa’s chest plummeted and rested heavy in the pit of his stomach. A prickle of oddness raced through his bones, making him shiver involuntarily. 

On his left, Elizabeth was close enough to bump her hip against him and touch the back of his hand. “What is it?” she asked. “Who do you suppose is steering this ship?”

“Wind’s dropping.” Jack stood at Barbossa’s right hand, rubbing his forearm distractedly. “Air’s not right.”

“Calypso.” Barbossa pointed at the tiny crab cresting the rail near Lady Lin. It waved its claws wildly, paused, then ran up the Lady’s arm.

“Sister.” Lady Lin held the crab on her palm. The small crustacean scuttled in a circle, then gently nipped the tip of the Lady’s nose with one claw. She held the crab at eye level. “You know our destination and need. We seek swift passage.”

The crab clicked three times, then jumped from the Lady’s hand back into the sea.

Barbossa gripped the Fenghuang’s smooth wooden rail tightly. A sensation began in the soles of his feet that traveled to his calf muscles, then into his thighs. A vibration, a tingling, the plucking of invisible strings that stretched between the nothing and the now. Calypso was near.

Was everywhere. 

_The sea was his blood. His bones were coral and abalone. Sky, earth and sea . . . continuous, contiguous, the sum of his parts divided across the depth and breadth of the world and her oceans, added back again to create a man._

_A man so evil, hell itself spat him back._

The Fenghuang seemed to shiver, sails stretching to their limits. With a great gust of wind came a sense of acceleration. Sky and sea grew milky with rolling fog and cloud, mist and spray. It was like going over the edge of the whirlpool without the sensation of falling. If anything, Barbossa wondered if the Fenghuang had taken flight.

“Swift passage,” Jack shouted. “Jumping or falling, we’re into the abyss. You still have the compass?”

“I do.” Elizabeth shouted back. “When we need it, I will have it for you.”

_Fire and smoke. Hoarse cries of men dying. Timbers shattered, explosions, conflagration, the greedy liquid maw sucking down all trace that the temerity of man’s invention had ventured away from the solid and safe._

Elizabeth’s hand was on his arm. “What is it?”

When he looked down at her, what he saw in her face was almost unbearable. 

“Ijsberg,” Barbossa lowered his head towards hers, in an effort to make his words private. “I’m feeling a bit at sea, Captain Swann. I’d like to revoke the oath I gave you on Stinking Island.”

“You and Jack will have to reach an accord someday.” Elizabeth snaked her arm about Barbossa’s, clasping her fingers with his. “What makes you want to kill him at this moment?”

“In retrospect I admit opportunities for me to kill Jack were many and varied. Torture seemed the better choice. It’s not so much that I wish to kill him now, but my personal instinct for survival is clamoring.” Barbossa felt the pressure Elizabeth returned against their clasped fingers. “There is no map for where we’re going. Two might have a chance. I’m not sanguine about the chances of three.”

“Teague said there was no Code for what we are trying to live,” Elizabeth’s words rose and fell over the noise of the wind. “At the beginning of it all there were no maps. I will make my own, and you will help. Jack will help. I am adamant.”

“Three is a very auspicious number, Captain Barbossa.” Lady Lin still stood at the prow, but her voice sounded as if she stood beside him, whispering into his ear. “Three legs will support great weight.”

“But you can never find breeches that fit.” Jack grinned like a madman through his writhing mass of wind-animated hair. “I’ve been called a first-rate cartographer. Not averse to making maps, or whatever else might need making.”

Barbossa gave up. He extracted his hand from Elizabeth’s and watched the fog turn smoky black. The Fenghuang began to lose speed.

“Day to night. Very odd,” Jack said.

Starless sky draped over the crescent-shaped silhouette of an island. Barbossa stared down at the water, at the reflection of a pale, golden moon. From the lee of the island up to the Fenghuang’s prow an undulating, colorless carpet of light seemed to point the way.

In the quiet that followed the wind’s subsidence, Lady Lin turned to face them. 

“We are arrived.”


	5. Chapter 5

They rowed ashore in a longboat, with two of the Lady’s men at the oars. Every movement, every dip of oar into water seemed muffled, indistinct.

Dark spread and grew as they approached the island, creating a featureless landscape of blackness that incorporated both starless sky and rocky earth. Barbossa shut his eyes. Cedar resin and rich, fertile soil mingled with the ocean’s brine. As sound and sight diminished, he found his nose and skin told him things his eyes could not. 

In yellow moonlight the looming forest behind the strip of fine sand beach was densely black, oddly lacking in shadowed detail.

“And so. Into dark woods again?”

He looked down and found Elizabeth at his side. “I’m not uneasy with dark woods and wild seas.” Barbossa chuckled at the serious, almost annoyed expression on her face. “It’s fair weather and the more . . . cultivated . . . expanses that lead to sloth, unguarded idleness and eventual diminishment of man’s greatest treasure.”

Elizabeth tried to keep her lips from curving into a smile, and failed. “And that treasure is?”

“You know the answer.” Jack offered Elizabeth his arm. “To come and go where the wild seas take you. To make your own choice over which path you’ll take into the dark wood. Walk with me, love?”

Lady Lin’s men settled with the boat. Without speaking, the Lady led the way into the forest. 

They followed a broad, pale band of crushed rock and sand. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Barbossa gradually formed an image of a spacious, naturally vaulted passage. There was a regularity to the spacing of the trees, a graceful symmetry of overlapping branches that made him suspect Nature had been aided in achieving the design.

Around a curving turn of path the darkness receded. Lady Lin led them into a moon-drenched clearing that contained a single structure. Barbossa had seen similar dwellings outside Singapore. Humble farmer’s homes utilized the same simple construction techniques.

Lady Lin broke her silence. “You may sleep in this place until morning. There is a price to be paid for the way we traveled here.” She gestured at the bench beside the door. “Please remove your shoes.”

“And you?” Elizabeth asked, yawning hugely.

“I will seek our host and let him know we have arrived.” With a half-bow, Lady Lin turned and followed the path out of the clearing into the darkness of the forest.

 

“Can barely keep m‘eyes open.” Jack stood in the center of the cottage’s single empty room. “Should be mats somewhere.”

They found five rolled sleeping mats stored next to a long bench against one wall. Moonlight streaming through open windows gave the empty room a spacious, somewhat unreal aspect. Cool, fragrant air moved on a gentle breeze, bringing the smell of dew-sodden grass.

“What do you suppose she meant, about the price to be paid?” Elizabeth smoothed her mat next to Barbossa’s. “Is that why I feel so tired, so suddenly?”

“Pro’bly. Even the Gods can’t interfere with the natural order without paying some fee. And they’d prefer to arrange it so mere mortals like us are the ones out-of-pocket.” Jack settled on Elizabeth’s other side. He lay back on his mat, turned his head and went silent.

“That may be the wisest observation you’ll ever make, Jackie.” 

Swift had not spoken since sailing from the Cove, Barbossa realized. Teague’s small, unobtrusive messenger placed his mat under a window and sat cross-legged, back against the wall.

“Fair poleaxed, I feel.” Gibbs flopped next to Jack. He lay on his stomach and immediately began to make subdued snuffling sounds.

“Everything . . . everything we receive in life, unasked and unsought, inherited or gifted, earned through labor and sweat, taken by force or cunning . . . there’s always a price. Sometimes the price is insignificant, sometimes dear.” The expression in Elizabeth’s voice was one of mild consideration.

“I believe that’s the way of it,” Barbossa said. He saw Swift’s nod of agreement. “I wouldn’t always have agreed. Recent experience has shown me the piper requires payment be made.”

“Always.” Her head swivelled to one side. With a small noise that sounded half sigh, half groan, she relaxed and slept.

Barbossa stretched out his legs stiffly. In a place of peace and simplicity he felt anything but peaceful. Fatigue tried to blot out coherent thought, offering another kind of peace if he would surrender.

“I won’t say -- don’t worry. But don’t worry unduly, Captain Barbossa,” Swift said. “We’re still on the threshold of adventure. There’s time to reconnoiter, make decisions, choose which direction in which to proceed.”

“Does a piece of timber choose where it goes before the spate of a hurricane? I refuse to accept that we’re the ones making the larger choices here.” The unforgiving floor poked cruel fists against his back and hips. Barbossa shifted and tried to ignore the discomfort. “Ever encounter the concept of predestination?”

Swift leaned forward into the moonlight. “I have no comment on the validity of that philosophy, except to say not all the Gods of Earth follow that path, Captain Barbossa.”

“For those who do, I have questions. Among them -- who chose to sell a beardless youth for a jug of spirits and sack of meal? The gods or my parents?” Barbossa snorted in derision. “And what makes one answer better than the other?”

“Hindsight illumines the twist and turn of choice with more success than foresight. I hold every thinking creature responsible for the choices they make.” Swift’s usually airy tone sounded weary and flat.

Barbossa shut his eyes. It was a surprise to realize that dying had quenched the smoldering rage he’d carried against the world since his youth. Memory still supplied visions of his past complete with the potent emotions and appetites that drove him to master his potential, his craft, and finally other men. But now, in place of the rage, something else had taken root and was putting out the first shoots of life. 

“Sleep now, Captain Barbossa. The examination of existence is better than a hot toddy for numbing the mind.” Swift’s voice seemed to drift through the darkness, in his mind, not in his ears. _This time round the choice of final harvest is yours alone._

 

“Barbossa. Barbossa. Lady Lin wishes us to rise.”

His mouth was full of foul-tasting slime, and while he slept someone had bludgeoned him repeatedly in the kidneys. Elizabeth’s voice drifted away. His own name was replaced with “Mr. Gibbs! Wake up!” 

“Gahhh . . . “

Sitting upright brought additional pains, and an alarming need to piss. Barbossa heaved himself upright and made for the cottage’s entrance. Lady Lin stepped aside to let him pass, smiling seraphically. 

“Greet the new day, Captain. We are expected elsewhere.”

“Piss on the new day,” Barbossa muttered, watering a bush. 

“One always does.” Jack strolled past, wiping water from his face. “There’s a very refreshing brook back there. You look as if you could use a very refreshing drink from just such a brook.”

Joints popped and cracked as Barbossa stretched and tried to loosen his arm and back muscles. Amazing how Sparrow’s nose worked for finding life’s essentials, if only for his own sustenance. It was one of the traits that had made Barbossa’s original position aboard the Pearl seem a tenable career choice.

Elizabeth approached, rubbing her eyes and yawning. “I believe I had the most curious dreams as I slept. But they’re all gone.”

Barbossa tightened his sash and beat out his hat before placing it firmly on his head. His stomach roared, like a beast long overdue for a kill.

“I find myself similarly hungry this fine morning.” Jack waited near the cottage door.

“Quickly. Come along. Now.” Lady Lin’s upturned palm stopped Gibbs as he stepped into the sunlight, blinking and rubbing his eyes. “Mr. Gibbs, please remain with Swift.”

Gold and green light dappled ferns beneath the trees, playing like a school of fish in shallow water. Branches bent over the path, a line of slender dancer’s arms holding sprays of leaves that moved in unison against the light wind. Each sound, the rasp of branch against branch, sigh of leaf against leaf, combined to envelop them in a subtle music of earth and air. Hidden in some private forest fastness, a lone bird whistled a long, trilling note.

It was too perfect, too beautiful, too arranged. Barbossa searched the undergrowth for downed trees, jagged limbs. He saw a single stump covered with wine-dark moss, footstool for a fairy queen. They passed a ring of toadstools, larger than he had ever seen, with caps the color of precious gems.

Elizabeth surged ahead to walk next to Lady Lin.

Around a bend of path the forest faded to a clearing of knee-high grass. Positioned center field across the clearing, with a toe of mountain rock behind, a simple cottage stood.

“Remove shoes. Wash hands.” Lady Lin pointed at a woven mat near a rain barrel. “Barbossa, Sparrow. Try not to speak.”

She looked and sounded nervous, Barbossa decided, analyzing the way the Lady clasped her hands and moved her eyes rapidly between them. Nervous and ill-at-ease. It was unsettling to detect such emotion in a woman who, to this moment, had shown nothing but placid equanimity.

They left their shoes outside the door and stepped over the threshold. The room was much like the cottage they had slept in. Simple, spacious, uncluttered with nonessentials.

“You honor my home. Be welcome.”

Barbossa blinked and squinted. The very air wavered like eddies of water around rock. A giddy sensation of imbalance momentarily gripped him, as mind and body seemed to part company. An impression that he viewed the room, the occupants, and heard their voices from a vast distance filled Barbossa with a disconcerting lassitude. Beside him, Jack shook his head, eyes glazed and fixed on their host.

“Ti-Long.“ Lady Lin bowed. “I introduce Elizabeth Swann. Hector Barbossa and Jack Sparrow accompany her.”

Elizabeth stepped forward without hesitation, leading with a characteristic jut of her chin.

They looked into each other’s eyes, a striking contrast on many levels: the pale-skinned young English woman with honey-colored hair and direct dark eyes; the slender, bronze-skinned man whose knee-length plaited hair shone with the gloss of polished obsidian. His brows arched like raven’s wings over eyes so green they made emeralds seem sun-faded. Ti-Long was royalty, Barbossa had no doubt. But although he held himself like a king, he was not a man any more than Lady Lin was a woman.

Elizabeth advanced until she stood but a foot from Ti-Long. Her head bowed in a brief salute, then lifted defiantly. “Ti-Long. We are honored. But why are we here?”

“Elizabeth Swann. Hector Barbossa. Jack Sparrow. Please sit. I will serve tea, then we will converse.”

Barbossa felt his legs fold under him, an awkward and slightly painful position. Jack sat next to him carelessly, crossing his legs as if it was no special inconvenience. TI-Long worked near a broad stone slab and brazier, with bowls and a whisk. Against the wall a second slab of rock held a round bed of live coals and a dull, olive-colored rock.

Elizabeth said something, musical notes of sound without meaning. 

Outside, rain began to fall toward the sky.

 

_. . . gods do you worship, Elizabeth Swann? That fiercely gentle man the Romans could not kill? No, I see the answer in you, an answer for which you have not yet sought. A surprising number of hands touch and protect you . . . mortal woman with three husbands. Lin-Moniang and Calypso speak on your behalf, urge me to embrace and trust the prophesy._

_She is gone. My wife. I do not know why, or where, and I am a husk, an empty shell, a thistle in the storm. I go to find her, yet this last thing must be attempted. Do for us what I may not do for myself._

_Everything changes, even the gods. Change does not have to mean death and oblivion. Choices are made. Paths taken. Renewal follows decay. Life balances the scales against death._

. . . cannot do this for yourself?

_Such quickening is beyond my scope. Mortal though you are, Elizabeth Swann, you have within you a gift I may not possess. I have no surety you can succeed where I have failed. But I hope. They all watch, and wait balanced on a cusp of possibility beyond which future worlds writhe and heave with potential. Some approve of our alliance, some disapprove, some have turned away in disinterest. We stand at a crossroads where even the gods of earth are blind._

_Looking at the heart of you, I now know the only surety that exists is your answer to me._

 

“Cap’n. Captain Barbossa.”

Gibbs was shaking his arm.

“Eh?” It was the best he could manage. Barbossa licked driftwood-dry lips and tried to blink mist from his eyes. The soft blur of his immediate vicinity sharpened into recognition. He was back on the Fenghuang. “Mister Gibbs?”

“Ah. I was a bit worried there.” Gibbs stood from a crouching position. “We’re sailing again. You and Jack -- well, seemed completely pixified.”

Barbossa gripped the rail above his head and hauled himself to his feet. Jack was nearby, leaning over the side, bent toward the waves crooning nonsense.

“I don’t --” He was about to say he didn’t remember, but upon examination, memory seemed intact. Intact, but distant. He could recall fragrant tea in the bowl he held mingling with odors from burning charcoal. Ti-Long’s golden fingers darkening to bronze as he lifted the stone from the coals. Elizabeth tying a quilted, silken bag around her neck. Grass along the walk back to the beach, so wet it left him soaked above the tops of his boots nearly to his thighs.

“Don’t like feeling this way,” Jack announced clearly. “Drunk without the pleasure of drinking. Very Lockerish and discomfiting to lose touch with one’s firmaments, so to speak.”

“Aye.” Lanterns winked along the rail. In the now uniformly gray air, Barbossa made out Elizabeth, Lady Lin and Swift, heads bent close in conversation. “You heard it all, Jack? Know what Elizabeth carries?”

“I believe I may know, although much was implied, hinted, presented for consideration in a most oblique and unhelpful manner of exposition.” Sparrow turned to face him. “I’m asking myself, with much interest and speculation, if _you_ know what she carries.”

There was a tone in Jack’s voice that made Barbossa take a long look into his smudged eyes. “Heard a story once, in Singapore. About a temple of gold built to guard the egg of a Celestial dragon.”

“Good story, that was.” Gibbs had been listening eagerly. “Thousand years plus a thousand years it took afore it hatched. And when it hatched, the King of Dragons crawled out, wiv scales of gold, claws of ruby, holding a pearl as big as a cannonball between its teeth.”

“Well, yes. I heard that story as well. Good story.” Jack nodded at Gibbs. “You may have noticed the silk cord around Captain Swann’s neck. It connects with a pouch lying between her lovely . . . connects with a pouch that contains a dragon’s egg.”

In the twilight, Gibbs’ eyes resembled a pair of fried chicken eggs. “Bless us. Dragon’s egg? What have we to do with a dragon’s egg?”

“Midwifery, I expect. Although I’m hazy on the exact procedure.”

Elizabeth left the Lady and Swift and joined them. “We have another quick trip to make.”

It was like the voyage that transported them away from Shipwreck Island. There was the sensation of great speed without impediment of water against the Fenghuang’s hull. They seemed to travel with as little effort as it took to wave a hand through the air. Mist rolled over the deck like insubstantial snowdrifts. 

“If I fell overboard, where do you suppose I’d land?” Elizabeth maneuvered herself to stand in the shelter of Barbossa’s arms. She tilted her head to shout over the howling of the wind. 

“Best not pursue an answer to that question.” Her words were mostly jest, but Barbossa recognized the look in her eyes, the spark that sometimes flared to consume her. It was becoming an almost frightening imperative in her character -- the need to know, to explore, to master her world. These traits were not necessarily bad ones, Barbossa encouraged himself, resolutely ignoring another, smaller, voice that noted he hoped his own stamina would survive her adventurous inclinations.

“We’re slowing.” Jack sniffed the air. “Smell something. Hot, green land.”

Mist thinned as the wind subsided. The roar of water crashing over rock filled the air. With stately assurance the Fenghuang sailed toward a shore Barbossa had never seen.

“Africa.” Jack pointed at the single mountain visible on the far horizon. “Don’t know just where.”


	6. Chapter 6

The Fenghuang dropped anchor pre-dawn, in the short space before sun rose in gold and red splendor. On the far horizon, the distant mountain peak seemed to catch fire as night’s air stilled, then changed direction toward the coming day. 

Behind them headland thrust out a tapering finger to create sheltered water past a line of turbulent breakers. Shoreward, Barbossa could make out lighter colored waters where a substantial sandbar lay between their current position and the wide mouth of a river harbor. 

Lady Lin moved among her men, giving quiet instructions as they prepared to lower the longboat into the sea.

“Africa.” Elizabeth stared at the seemingly impenetrable tangle of jungle slowly revealed as morning fog dissipated and rose in graceful, trailing ribbons of white air. “I have heard stories of magnificent animals.”

“Elizabeth. Love.” Jack sighed deeply. “No one knows better than I your superior ability to ensure your own survival. Be aware that nine out of ten of said magnificent animals you may encounter on these shores, in these waters, will consider you a most succulent and toothsome luncheon.”

Elizabeth ignored him. She pointed at a massive piece of dark rock that dominated a portion of scrubby, barren headland. “A unique landmark. It almost looks like a head.”

“There’s a pack for each of you.” Swift drew their attention from the rock to a pile of leather bags Lady Lin’s men were feeding over the side of the ship. “Claim one as your own, once we’re aboard, and whatever befalls us, try and hang on to it.”

_Whatever befalls us._ Barbossa followed Jack down the ladder onto the boat with wry appreciation for Swift’s implication. Stories he had heard of African animals, expeditions, and adventures were not tales where most participant characters were able to keep their own skins intact, never mention the fate of personal effects.

“Jackie and I will man the oars. Mister Gibbs, distribute the packs evenly. I’m not sure we’ll clear the bar as it is.”

“Afraid of getting your feet wet, Swift?” Jack took an oar and nudged an elbow into Swift’s side. “Water’s not your element, I recall.”

“We’ve reached an accord.” Swift grinned. “Put your back into it, now.”

Barbossa sat near the bow and watched the sea bottom rise as they approached the sandbar. Through crystal clear water he could see small crabs scurry away from the boat’s shadow. “Best course is straight ahead, Mr. Swift.” 

Plumes of milky water curled away from both sides of the longboat as each stroke of the oars dug into the bar. Barbossa felt the slide of wood against sand. The boat slowed for a moment, then with three strong strokes they slipped away from shallow water. Once past the bar, the water deepened to a rich opaque brown.

“We’re over.” Swift twisted his head to look back at Lady Lin. “Left shore?”

“Yes.” The Lady sat with her head bowed, eyes closed. She seemed to be asleep, or listening intently.

From a spot perhaps three-quarters of a mile distant, near the center of the harbor’s shoreline, an enormous cloud of waterbirds took flight then wheeled overhead. Barbossa squinted. The mouth of the river would be there. He could smell the change between sea and river. Muck and rotting vegetation mixed with a faint, sickly odor carried on the wind out of the jungle.

“Marshes nearby.” He caught Swift’s eye. “How long is our trip upriver? Stories I’ve heard of Africa say if the animals don’t eat you, and the insects don’t drive you mad, the swamps will kill you with fever.”

“Three, four days.” Swift rowed steadily, in perfect unison with Jack. “Every land has its perils.”

“Miss Elizabeth was right.” Gibbs stared at the rock on the opposite shore with wide eyes. “Shaped like a black man’s head. Fair gives me the creeping crabs.” His hand sketched an arc in the air. “See -- eyes there. Mouth, there. Kind of wide, like he’s screaming.”

The Lady and Swift did not look at the rock. Jack stole a quick glance, then kept his eyes straight ahead focused on their course. 

“The first of your magnificent African animals, Captain Swann.”

From his position in the bow, Barbossa could now see details of the shore around the river mouth. Sloping banks of bare earth on each side of the channel were lined with objects roughly the same shape and size of large green-brown logs.

Logs with teeth.

“Crocodiles.” Elizabeth leaned forward. “They are far larger than I ever imagined.”

“Quiet and steady and straight down the center.” Swift grimaced. “And keep your hands inside the boat.”

“Bless me. Every one has teeth like baby kraken.” Gibbs pushed his fingertips into his shirt sleeves. 

“And not the worst this place has to offer.” One enormous reptile slid into the water and assumed a course parallel to the boat. “What is our destination, Lady?”

“A hidden, sacred place near that mountain we viewed from the harbor, Captain Barbossa.” The words were mumbled, indistinct. Lady Lin pulled herself erect and opened her eyes. “Four days on the river. Ten on foot to the fabulous city of Kor. Speed us on our way, Swift. This is not my place.”

_This is not my place._ Dried mud and sunbaked air. Rotting rushes. Phlegm-thick slime curdled against the river bank. Barbossa’s bones ached with the knowledge that Africa was not his place, either. Not that he minded the sun on his head, the wind in his face. Even when the wind carried scents of decay and lingering foulness, these things alone could be duplicated on the wide oceans. There was an iron, stony hardness to the heat of the sun, the smell of the air under marsh-reek, that settled a heavy discomfort in the bottom of his lungs and made every breath seem an effort.

They made good time up the river. Jack and Swift gave up the oars to Barbossa and Gibbs once, then took them back again. A small mast and sail remained furled on the boat. The Lady looked at it, shaking her head. 

“Uncertain,” she said. “Trust to your own strength.”

The air over the water was strangely windless, Barbossa came to realize. 

Elizabeth saw it as well. “The wind moves through the brush and trees, but not on the water. Why?”

Lady Lin shook her head. “We are watched, and to some extent protected. But even among those who protect us there are rivalries that may create unusual, occasionally dangerous, conditions as we journey.”

“We’re not knackered this time,” Gibbs observed suddenly. “Expected we’d all be half-asleep again, after that trip. Not that I mind. I’m no’ easy with the thought of bedding down on this shore.”

“We’ve gained several expedition sponsors,” Swift grinned. “Others paid the transportation fee.”

And sponsors usually wanted _something_ for their investment. Words and phrases from the conversation between Ti-Long and Elizabeth came and went in irritating fragments. Barbossa forced himself to let his mind go still and quiet. He focused on the river beneath them, and the jungle to either side. 

Another change of rowers, another hour in the hot sun. Barbossa’s stomach began to seize and cramp. The hunger he had felt upon awakening on Ti-Long’s island returned with more insistent demand. “There will be food in those packs?”

“Yes. Food. Water.” Lady Lin pointed up river at a shallow, sandy bank, uninhabited by any apparent toothy denizens. “Let us take this chance to stand on solid ground. It may be some time before such opportunity comes again.”

“You’ll find dried fruit, cured meat and biscuit in your packs. Eat sparingly,” Swift said as they pulled the boat ashore. “Later, when we’re off the river, we can hunt.”

It was hotter on land than water. Air moved among the stocky trees and tangled wall of impenetrable greenery just yards from the riverbank, but it was like the hot, rank breath expelled from a man caught in the grip of fever. Elizabeth and Jack sat on the edge of the boat, eating and looking through their packs. Elizabeth’s hat lay discarded. She kept her face high, seeking the sun like a starved English garden flower. 

“Bad air.” Gibbs stood uncomfortably, shifting his weight from foot to foot, staring into the jungle with evident suspicion. “Somewhere close by there’s a lot of water gone right off.”

Barbossa chewed nearly without tasting. He washed the meal down with more water than he would usually drink, weighing the skin in his hand. He caught Swift’s eye. The man was a hard read, but his grey eyes held a grim certainty Barbossa could recognize, and ponder.

“Aye. Go easy on the water as well. There may be a spring later, but considering the closeness of the marshes I wouldn’t advise drinking water from the river. In a pinch river water can be heated and made into tea to fill the skins.”

“Stretch your limbs and we will continue.” Lady Lin gestured to Elizabeth and the two women stepped around a broad tree trunk. 

“Easy enough for us to piss over the side of a boat.” Jack grinned at Gibbs. “Bit difficult for the ladies.”

Barbossa took a step closer to them, glancing over his shoulder quickly. “Jack. Mister Gibbs. Try and keep that hat on her head. It’s a different sun and heat here.”

“She seems a bit distracted, Miss Elizabeth does.” Gibbs looked thoughtful. “Not usually so quiet and into herself.”

Jack stooped, picked up a rock and tossed it into the river. When he straightened he gave a short, sharp nod. “It’s what she’s got round her neck, I think. The egg. Thing likes heat.”

“Then we have to . . . “ Barbossa’s tongue stopped moving, paralyzed. A sound that was not a sound pounded against his body and resonated in his blood. It was so similar to the call of Aztec gold that his eyes went instinctively to his fingers. _Not bone. Still flesh._

Jack’s pistol was already in his hand. Gibbs stood wary and disturbed, head whipping around to scrutinize the jungle.

“God’s stones. What was that?”

“Not completely sure.” Barbossa found he held his own blade ready. 

“Into the boat.” Lady Lin ran toward them, Elizabeth close at her heels. “Into the river.”

They moved as one toward the boat.

Another sound filled the air. Conveying all the droning threat of a dislodged bee hive, but higher and shriller, the noise made Barbossa’s teeth and bones buzz with irritated discomfort. “Whatever it is, it’s getting closer.” 

Even as he spoke, a blur of motion erupted from the wall of jungle.

“Bugger. Bugs.” Swift captured the blur mid-flight. It flailed in his hands, a dark shape that buzzed furiously. With all his strength Swift smashed the thing against the nearest tree trunk. It fell, broken and kicking, with a noise like crunching bones and shattering glass.

It took only a moment for Barbossa’s eyes to deliver a comprehensive report on the carcass. The creature was as large as a winged kitten, with too many legs, too-large eyes, and a miniature spear where a wasp carried its stinger. 

“Barbossa! Behind!” Swift dodged, lunged and intercepted another insect. 

Moving with defensive instinct, Barbossa’s sword connected with the first flyer that got near him. It left an impression of furiously eager pinschers and grasping legs before it sailed over the river and dropped into the water. There was barely time to see it didn’t resurface. Something sharp grazed his cheek, and caught, tangled in hat and hair. Barbossa ripped the hat from his head. Serrated pinschers had grasped his hat and stuck fast. Furious to be free, the insect whipped wings and legs in a frenzy, stabbing a stinger as long as a woman’s finger repeatedly into the dirt. With a grimace, Barbossa ground both hat and insect under his heel.

Satisfaction from crunching the thing was momentary. Dark shapes hovered and darted around them, moving with hummingbird speed and agility. Barbossa’s blade connected again, a satisfying solid thwack! that resulted in another dive into the water. 

Swift shouted his approval, exultant and fierce. The words were not in a language Barbossa recognized, although the sentiment was obvious. Battle rage rose in response to the rally cry, thick and hot. On sea or land, fighting was something he could still do, and do well. Arm, blade and body moved together without hesitation, without conscious thought . . . teeth gritted, faint taste of bloody sweat on his tongue from a scratch near his mouth . . . Barbossa laughed and bellowed back at Swift. “Kill them all, Mister Swift!” 

In a gesture of salute, Barbossa impaled another flyer on his sword. Continuing the motion of his arm, he buried the point deep in the sand, nearly cutting the bug in half. As two separate sections attempted to move in two separate directions, the stinger whipped around and pierced the toe of Barbossa’s boot. The pain was sharp, and infuriating. Barbossa used his uninjured foot to hold the rear half of the bug in place while he dislodged the stinger. Pulling his blade free, he kicked the halves in opposite directions. “Come here and die, y’loathesome vermin.” 

The challenge was not immediately answered. 

Barbossa quickly evaluated the battlefield. His companions seemed to have their task well in hand. Jack had exchanged pistol for sword. He and Elizabeth stood back to back alternately swatting and hacking. Gibbs held a branch as thick as a man’s leg that he wielded like a club. A growing pile of broken, twitching insects littered the ground around Swift’s feet.

And Lady Lin stood by the boat, head bowed, apparently ignored by the attackers.

“ . . . buggerbuggerbuggerbugger . . .” Jack broke away from Elizabeth and danced past, trying to dislodge an insect from his sleeve. Shirt fabric being considerably weaker than a hat, sharply working pinschers were already scoring bloody marks on Jack’s bare skin.

“Going up my shirt!” Jack’s free hand fended off Elizabeth . “You’ll cut off my arm!”

“Not by accident.” Elizabeth whirled away from Jack as one of the insects glanced off her shoulder. It fell to the sand, kicking to right itself. “I think not!” 

“Watch the stinger!” Barbossa’s caution was unnecessary. With a flourish Elizabeth’s blade created three pieces from one.

“Swift? Anyone?” Jack’s voice sounded distinctly higher in pitch.

Two quick steps to the boat and Barbossa grabbed Elizabeth’s discarded hat. “Hold still, Jack.” The hat folded nicely around the bug, although the stinger wrenched itself free of shredded fabric and pierced the crown. It quivered there, like a worm surfacing from the depths of an apple. Carefully avoiding the point of the stinger, Barbossa grasped the hat-entombed insect and pulled it away. A substantial portion of Jack’s shirt accompanied the action. He dropped the hat to the sand and stepped down hard with both feet.

“Most obliged.” Jack inspected the remnants of his sleeve with disfavor. “I appreciate the timely extermination.” 

Weak buzzing sounds from a few dying insects gradually diminished. In moments, none of the flying attackers remained alive.

“Think that’s the last of ‘em?” Gibbs backed up against Swift’s bug-smashing tree, blew out his cheeks and panted. His face was the color of freshly curdled whey.

“I say, don’t wait to find out.” Swift rubbed his palms on the seat of his pants. “Lady Lin?”

She pointed to the boat. 

Swift and Gibbs half-ran to the river, and between them moved the boat off the bank.

Jack retrieved Elizabeth’s hat carefully with two fingers and shook out the remains. “Useful to have a hat nearby.”

“Yes.” Elizabeth took the hat, inspected the interior then dusted it off against her thigh. Turning it inside out, she placed the hat on her head. “None of the African tales I’ve heard mentioned creatures like these.”

Barbossa shook remains off his own hat, then squatted and took a close look at one of the still twitching bodies. 

“Never seen anything like it.” Jack poked the bug with his toe. “Looks like it’s wearing armor. That stinger is more like a spear than a wasp’s behind. Not detachable, good for multiple skewerings.”

“It looks . . . primitive.” Elizabeth bent and fingered one of the semi-transparent, rainbow-hued wings. “Stiff and strong as a sail,” she said thoughtfully.

“Come!” Lady Lin was already in the boat.

With Gibbs and Swift at the oars, the boat skimmed into the center of the river and left the insect-strewn riverbank far behind.

“Comments or explanations on what just occurred would be well received.” Barbossa looked past Swift’s head at the Lady, whose eyes were closed once more.

“Later. Tonight.” Lady Lin opened her eyes briefly. “Achieve distance first.”

It seemed important to heed her instruction, although Barbossa felt a growing sense of rebellious impatience. There was no conversation as the men took turns at the oars. Elizabeth sat with eyes shaded from the sun under her floppy hat, one hand on the packet between her breasts. She exclaimed once, pointing at several pairs of eyes and protruding nostrils big enough to swallow her fist.

“River horses. Drift past and think innocent thoughts.” Jack eased off his oar.

The eyes looked at them incuriously, then moved away with snorts that sent a mist of water against their faces.

“I’d hate to fend off a herd of those on the water.” Gibbs wiped sweat and river droplets off his face. “Or on land, for that matter.”

“They can be dangerous, roused,” Swift said. “We’re past. Row on.”

Long before daylight faded, Barbossa felt his own energies ebb. Rowing left him stiff and sore, a condition aggravated by sitting in one position on hard planking. His toe burned and throbbed where the stinger had pierced leather and flesh. When he removed his boot, Barbossa found an angry red puncture wound at the base of his big toe.

“That don’t look comfortable.” Jack peered at the wound, then inspected his own scratches. “Swift -- got a bit of Teague’s Balm in your pack?”

“Always, Jackie. Anyone else in need of patching?”

Gibbs and Elizabeth declined. Teague’s Balm was a cool, waxy ointment that smelled like catmint. It packed into the puncture and coated the skin, bringing an immediate sensation of coolness and cessation of pain.

“You’ll want to keep an eye on that, Captain Barbossa,” Swift warned. “We’ll be walking in unhealthy places when we leave the river.”

“I’m aware of the risk.” Barbossa reached over and ripped away a piece of Jack’s shredded sleeve. He wrapped the cloth between his toes and replaced his boot.

They drifted as light drained from the sky, through a landscape of shorter, less frequent trees and scraggly, creeper covered brush. As the wind died along the banks a thick, unpleasant smell seemed to flow out onto the water.

“Anchor near river’s center.” Lady Lin stood and stretched her hands toward the deepening dark of the sky. Stars began to appear, an increasingly brilliant array.

Barbossa evaluated the land that lay on either side. It was a relief to know they would spend the night on the water. The riverbank was uninviting and unaccountably repellent, a never-ending wall of stunted plants that fronted more marshland than he had ever imagined could exist.

“Eat and drink, then try and sleep. Swift and I will keep watch tonight.” Lady Lin pulled a skin from her pack and took a small drink. 

They rummaged in the packs and found biscuits and strips of cured meat. Barbossa took a biscuit and ate it slowly, listening. It had been quieter than he would have expected during the balance of the day. Brush of wind against wood and rushes, a few faraway bird cries, water tumbling over partially submerged logs combined for almost unnoticeable background noise. Conversation in the boat had been limited to a few words as they changed rowers. Now silence seemed to spread in ripples around them. 

“Tell us about the insects.” His words seemed unnaturally loud. Barbossa made an effort and dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “In all my travels I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“They reminded me of the eels.” Elizabeth made her way over to sit beside him. “Like something from another time. Ancient.”

“Ancient.” 

Lady Lin was now only a dark silhouette. Barbossa could not see the expression on her face, but her voice conveyed a thoughtful reluctance that made his skin creep. 

“I do not believe either the eels or flies are native to the time and place in which they appeared. Unfortunately, I do not yet know how they came to be in our vicinity, or who might have caused them to be.”

“Heathen magic?” Barbossa felt Elizabeth move closer to his side. “Did you feel the knell?”

“I did, Captain Barbossa.” 

“Who, or perhaps I should say what, might have the ability to accomplish delivery of such gifts? And for what reason?” Jack lay crossways at the bottom of the boat, his arm draped over Elizabeth’s feet.

Lady Lin did not answer.

“Ill-will seems indisputable. Or perhaps an overly aggressive and cryptic message having to do with our expedition? Whatever that is. Since I’ve something of a calling as shipboard historian and tale-collector, I’d give a good day’s work to know just what our expedition is set on accomplishing.” Gibbs settled himself on the opposite side of the oarsmen’s bench, close to the Lady, wallowing and farting until he seemed settled. “Best keep our heads low as possible lest some great African serpent come swimming by, looking for an easy meal.”

Jack slid down a touch further. “Nice thought, that. One hopes you’re nearly done breaking wind and wheezing like an excited clergyman, Mister Gibbs. I’ve heard it said that lions will swim after prey as well.”

“I’m not wheezing. Thought that was one of you.”

“Quiet.” Swift’s command was harsh. “Listen.”

It wasn’t wheezing at all, Barbossa realized as the first mosquito landed on his cheek. The high, thin sound deepened to droning, buzzing and whining. Looking upward, Barbossa saw stars smudged from sight.


End file.
